Our Beautiful Precocious Children
by Farmageddon
Summary: After "Assimilation" an eight year old girl is "accidentally" sent back to 1999 . Explores the theme of a synthesis between the core programs of AI/ Human sentience.
1. Chapter 1

Here's the thesis I've been contemplating and I guess it's what my stories have been edging around .

1. Under the right conditions the core biological programme that give rise to human awareness, sentience and consciousness will be reducible to mathematical formula and expression. I can see one way of approaching that problem, even if I lack the means of expression.

2. It will be possible to translate elements of our biological core programme into a abstract language compatible with AI , and vice versa, once a suitable "structure " and compatible language has been developed.

.

I have been playing with the idea of what an assimilated sentience would be like. So, I came up with the character , " Rain ". She is eight year old product of the assimilation that necessarily occurs after The War . Rain, it seems, "accidentally" gets Time-Shuttled back to 1999 .

If I may, I would like to ask you to reread two sections of a previous story . I am going to lay them out like small separate parts in Chapter 1 .

I will to build on these and try to show how an approach to abstracting " biological core "programmes " could be arrived at.

The first part of Chapter 1 is the story of John Connor And The Chess Board . The second part is reintroducing the character Yoshiko Yamanto who, in this fiction , under the threat of execution in Century , figures it all out.

The Second Chapter looks briefly at the nature of assimilated sentience.

The final chapter of this story will lay out how human "core programmes" could be reducible to mathematical formula, and what approach Yoshi used.

* * *

Chapter 1. Part 1 Understanding Ambiguity.

You must have heard the story about John Connor's opening move in Century Work Camp? The one where he makes the chess board?

In Century, work detail would collapse into what ever makeshift bedding the machines had allowed them to scavenge from the shells of former factories and the streets of broken buildings inside the camp perimeter . The Machines had left these buildings intact as killing houses. They would release a human to determine how he or she would try to evade and hide from them, would they make for the stairs or the cellars?They could also study and record group dispersal patterns and behaviours. These areas are where they refined their optical and other tracking systems. It is also where they tested our reactions as well as our "physical response" to the trauma of ballistics.

The machines were tolerant of scavenging . Searching out bedding and materials gave humans temporary purpose, A sense of purpose increased efficiency, furthermore without bedding and recycled clothing humans expended more energy and required more nutrition. They sometimes left piles of clothing and boots in the entrance to the factory. Machine psychology suggested it would hep make a more positive association with the building. Those on incineration detail would inform the other details of clothing availability, because that day, they had been ordered to strip and burn bodies naked, placing clothing and footwear in sorted piles at the disused factory entrance.

The Machines had also allowed their POW's a to scavenge things with which scratch and scrawl images and graffiti onto concrete surfaces, even to make small artefacts and produce diaries. These became objects of machine study, windows into understanding human nature and psyche. Anything that fell outside the tolerated paradigm of artefact such as makeshift weapons, would be immediately confiscated, and the perpetrators punished on the spot . As we all know , then The machines remind us we have a relatively low threshold of pain, and are physically frail. Night and day the machines observed us. Partly using us as a study group, partly as an easily available , renewable , and ultimately expendable workforce.

In his third month in Century John had improvised a chess board by scratching out the squares onto a sheet of plate aluminium using a piece of timber for straightedge and a four inch nail as a scribe. He stashed it under one of the many loose tiles in the dormitory bloc. He knew the machines would find it. By trying to conceal the board it would indicate to The Machines the value he placed on it. He set about collecting bits of scrap metal, nuts bolts, screws , off cuts of low grade metal plate for the chess pieces and kept them in a pocket he cut out from an old pair of combat trousers.

One night , John forced himself stay awake after tipping back his bowl and swallowing cold grey-pink goo .( Feed was actually some of the less fit and able, former members of the work detail rendered down , with a few added flavours supplements, roughage minimal doses of antibiotics .) He had finished "feed" -( no one ever called it a meal) He got out his chess board, lined up the pieces, hexi-bolts- pawns, 20 mm screws Knights. 30 mm for a Bishop. A square off-cut of steel for a King. And so on.

John looked at Maddie Harrison who had been lying on her side watching him and got her to follow what he was doing. She was eleven years old. Her parents had died in Century before John arrived . It was the time The Machines had wanted to test the interaction of various grades of alloy with living tissue. That is why Maddie was still alive. She had a series of alloy rods, differing grades drilled and fused into the bone her arms . Some of the slightly projecting ends of the rods itched and and sometimes watery fluid blistered out around the surrounding skin of those ones which weren't successfully taking. Maddie got less, and lighter duties by virtue of being one of their "volunteers" .

John gestured for her to come over . Maddie was old enough to remember how to play chess. The Night Sentry , a T600 became intrigued and began recording the event.

After three short games, all of which Maddie "won" John motioned for her to try to get some sleep.

The Night Sentry came over and quietly asked John what had happened.

John explained he had wanted to play chess, he was normally a good player, but he was tired so the child easily beat him. Did the T600 know that throughout history many human leaders played chess? It was still a popular game with all Resistance fighters. It helped them with their strategic thinking. Then he said he was tired , still hungry , and rolled over. Before he drifted off, he kept talking: There was a point humans can't think around when they are fatigued, and that's why a rested eleven year old child beat him at chess tonight. You had to be in the right frame of mind to think like a chess player, then he gabbled on like most humans do about pre- Judgement Day life : chess clubs, people he'd known , games he had played. The T600 recognised reminiscing as a basic human trait in captivity and a good source of intelligence.

It was a gamble the T600's ( most basic) Gestalt subroutines would take the bait- It would grasp the potential of a game of chess to measure human strategic thinking under differing conditions. The machines couldn't "get" whole aspects of human nature and motivations. They weren't able build an accurate predictive model of what we were going to do next. John's gamble was The Machines would try to determine what constituted efficient and inefficient human states of mind , and how these differing states of mind affected our ability to make decisions and develop tactical planning . The objective would be to develop a set of predictive models. Chess was clearly the abstraction of our ability to form strategy , and this ability could be measured under differing conditions . A tempting area for area for research and experimentation.

The Night Sentry reported chess playing activity, and the possibility of determining new areas of human tactical vulnerabilities. The Controller became curious. At First Detail it sat her in a chair in Control and ordered Maddie to play chess against itself using a keyboard and large computer screen. Of course the controller won hands down, every game . It ordered other children to play, and sent for a control group of adults.

To mimic the conditions the Resistance fought under, it ordered some of them be given (for Century) high levels physical rest , regular sleep, and higher levels of nutrition throughout the testing period, others less food and rest, it and subjected some of them to relatively harmless periods of sleep depravation. Humans never won a single game of chess, although some games lasted longer when they developed more sophisticated tactics.

However , humans silently began to acknowledge their first real victory. Humans, particularly,children began thinking in terms beyond staying alive today and tomorrow Those in the test group began conceiving new new chess moves, discussing something more than daily survival with others. The testing also bought hours off work detail, sometimes additional sleep sometimes higher levels and quality of feed A fitter , sharper group was emerging.

Importantly it came to be recognised The Machines could be manipulated because they only comprehended the superficial reasons for our behaviours. What they intrinsically lacked and would never get, was a grasp of our real underlying motives and objectives . Their reasoning evolved from 0's or 1's, a thing was either itself or not, outcomes from the competition of strong probabilities, Being nothingness- existence or not. They couldn't comprehend ambiguity, nor our sense e of ambivalence. . And it was this weakness, John and the rest of those in Century gradually, imperceptibly and confidently began to develop and manipulate . And from that moment on the Metal fuckers never saw what was coming at them.

* * *

  
Chapter 1 part 2. Yoshiko Yamanto - The Core Programme

Yoshi knelt down to pick up the piece of human meat in front of her. It had got caught under the left hand rail of the wagon tracks. In Century not everything made it into the incinerators or rendering plant straight away. POW's got tired and careless and this applied equally to all Details , as well as those loading the Feed Compactor.

The flesh was definitely human , as far as she could tell , it had been part of a forearm. It had to be human because there wasn't any other likely source . It was too big to be Bald Rat and the wrong shape. Roadways sometimes didn't get cleaned properly at the end of Detail. To avoid group punishment, she had decided to wrap it, and carry it back to drop into a container for tomorrow's consignment.

The track and roadways were momentarily quiet, so she found herself studying the forearm . It was crawling- alive with the dark crackling, electricity of flies. Flies were one species that did well after JD. At first , there were genetic mutations due to their consuming copious amounts of fallout in radioactive carcasses. The radiation had resorted their genetic potential. The possible permutations in their genetic coding had been accelerated, maybe a whole period of natural mutation and selection had been swiftly moved along and worked through in less than a decade. When their food source dwindled after the post JD peak, the most apt of their species were naturally selected. This Post JD variety, The Blueneck , was honed and aggressive in its behaviour , and you didn't have to be remotely dying for them to take interest in you. These damn things were tenacious and determined , they could detect a small cut healing on your leg and spend hours trying to get to it .

Yoshi would tell you, ( Well, she never open up to a stranger, so I'll tell it for her) , after JD the nearly all the flowers " went the way of all things ",and most of the insect population became extinct along with the flowers, she had said , simply , "you have to become a bit of a Buddhist" to appreciate the value in what life remained. But, it was life, and that was preferable to scorched concrete, sterile earth and Metal alternative.

If it did anything, JD totally stripped away our sentimental preconceptions took the meanings we place on all organic sentience to another level. If you couldn't attain that level in Century, more likely than not , one day pretty soon, you ended up with lifeless eyes reflecting the eternal overhead grey cloud , and crawling in Bluenecks, yourself . This was an understanding born of survival .

When Yoshi wanted to tune out of Century she went into that deeper place. Without egoism she recalls Einstein had once been asked where is your laboratory? . We can imagine his benign smile when he tapped his forehead and replied: This is my only laboratory . All that time in captivity Yoshi had carried on working through what would have been her Doctoral thesis in her head. She had been assigned a mind numbing cleaning and picking detail,. At first it only occupied her need for thought and reasoning , to flex her intelligence after a while it took on a significance of its own.

The import thing to understand here is, Yoshi didn't have any new data or reference material, so she did what would have been impossible on a university schedule . She had been given the time, a necessary space in her mind , to refine every thing she knew to a level unachievable in normal academic conditions . This refinement occurred in a completely new environment, under intense pressures with a new set of survival precepts , and, after she refined everything she knew, and started fitting it together , aspects of a stronger workable model of human / machine sentience-consciousness and its underlying mathematical structures revealed itself to her.

Some would say in those flashes , the language of creation spoke directly to her, it whispered to her , explaining the core programmes of our self-awareness, and when it did , for Yoshi it was like a shaft of clean light blasting into hell.


	2. Chapter 2 Ellison meets Rain

Cameron rested the T8 on its side across the rear wings of the car . She held its head and neck carefully lowered its top half into the hood . In the same movement its knees were curled up into its chest . She then folded its lower legs so its heels were touching against its backside. From where Ellison is standing Cameron puts him in mind of a child, self-absorbed in the task of carefully packing away and an oversize doll .

There was something respectful in the way she was handling the broken machine.

Cameron examined the endoskeleton . On a piece of old carpet , in the boot of the Mercedes , the broken T8 was utterly lifeless . She knows endoskeletons are be built to last. This one could survive most things, maybe for thousands of years and when the car is no more than a streak of rust in geological strata, it would still be there timeless, as a prehistoric skeleton. It was built to survive the attrition of time, but not Thermite. She'd find an isolated spot and torch the metal carcass later.

She took one last look at the T-8s empty port housing and shut the hood on it.  


* * *

  
Cameron turned quickly and began walking in his direction . Ellison swallowed and he could feel Rain's hand tightly gripping his own. His mind couldn't make sense of what he had just witnessed. This slightly built, young girl -nothing human could possibly have fought in the way she did , or survive, like she had . She had broken a machine that looked like man into pieces and picked them up off the floor. He could feel the sweat on his back , cold as seeping fear. Everything Sarah Connor had screamed and ranted about on the _Pescadero_ video tapes had to have been true.

Cameron seemed to flow across the space between them . Instinctively Ellison tried get Rain behind him . She wouldn't budge. He might as well have been trying pull at a firmly rooted tree.

"Let go of his hand and go sit in the car." Cameron sounded almost like "the General", Rain had seen and heard in The War footage. It was was her voice , as Rain had heard it, narrating in The First Book Of Sarah .

The eight year old girl hesitated and scowled back at her.

"That is an order " Cameron prompted .

Rain scrunched her lips together and stood her ground.

Cameron put her hands on her hips and stood to one side of Rain. She was staring intently at Ellison , almost impatiently looking him up and down , scanning his physiology. Ellison turned and looked at her and then looked down at Rain. His free arm protectively held Rain.

"What is it ?" Cameron nearly barked the question. Rain didn't flinch.

"Cameron , I am so sorry, I absolutely don't mean any disrespect , but you don't know who this is do you?

" Who this is? No . Should I? "

"This is James Ellison, he's an early believer, he's in the First Book Of ...

"OK stop, Rain , stop, right there."

Rain let go of Ellison's hand and almost threw herself towards Cameron. She wrapped her arms around her waist and held onto her tight.

"Please, General you will know him , it's in The Book" . Rain looks up at her . The lights of the cars on the flyover , briefly lit her dirt streaked face. Cameron strokes the top of the girls head her tone of voice softens. "Shhsh, you can have this hug now, but you are still in so much trouble young lady . What year are you from?"

Rain whispers the year she should be in. Cameron nods. She seems to be calculating, never taking her eyes off Ellison.,

Ellison takes in a sharp breath. Cameron's arm is across Rain pulling her in and the older girl is looking at him over the top of Rains head. Cameron's facial expression has softened, body language relaxed and the intensity is turned right down

Now , what appears to be a delicate female hand is outstretched towards him. She turns it over so he can see: Coltan knuckles protrude through the outer layer of skin . The skin around the metal is already healing and dry. Then the hand is held out, as an invitation.

"Mr. Ellison, General Cameron Connor, apparently " She speaks with quiet, matter-of-fact confidence.

Ellison exhales a sigh of relief. Nothing makes sense, but sense doesn't matter right now. He's alive.

Cameron's handshake is gentle but firm. Surprisingly the exposed metal his fingers press against, is warm.

* * *

They have been driving for over an hour. Rain has been assessing Cameron's evasion strategy. She is making loops and turns , trying to identify and flush out any possible tail. There is nothing behind or in front of them.

Rain shifts in the leather seats at the back of of the Mercedes so she can see both Ellison and General Cameron . Between long silent pauses Cameron has been patiently explaining to Ellison why there was T8 in the boot of her car, what it is, where it came from and what it's sole purpose was. Ellison has been quietly nodding and asking sensible questions. He's a believer now, you can see it in his eyes.

He relates something that makes absolute sense in this context.- If Sarah Connor's story had not seemed so unbelievable, he and many others would have had no problem believing in _her_.

They are out on the highway heading back to Red Valley. For miles , apart form trucks, they are the only traffic on the road. There's an orange glow over the first range of sandstone hills. Ellison realises just how is grateful he is to have lived to see this morning's-sun, rise.

Ellison sits back in his seat. Through a windshield , spattered with green squashed insects, he marvels at the light bursting over the top of the red hills. He listens to an eight year child's voice telling him the story of Judgement Day and what followed. Its simple poignancy touches him in a way an adult version could not.

He's been listening for twenty seven minutes when Ellison asks : "I don't get this bit, why were there so many orphans , what happened to all the adults?" Part of him wishes he hadn't , when he hears the answer.

"So," (Ellison tries to contain his emotions ) " , "Towards the end of The War, humans were capturing and reprogramming machines- Terminators, in response began -reprogramming (-is that the right word? ), - human POW's to fight on their side, and they had these neural interfaces- that's like something they put in your brain and it makes you do things that you don't really want to?

"Something like that," replies Rain. She suddenly looks lost in on a deep track of thought.

"So what happened, was there some great big battles and the adults were all killed?- Is that what happened to you mummy and daddy, I'm so sorry I should have ..?

Rain doesn't answer. Her mum died days before The Storming Of The Wire. That's what she was told . That is all she knows.

There's a silence.

Cautiously Rain glances up at Cameron who catches her looking at her through the rear view mirror. Rain has more tactical sense than to relate this part of the story . Rain knows why General Cameron Connor was wiped and sent back to 1999, but she is not sure if Cameron has worked it out yet, and Rain sure isn't going to be the one to give her that piece of information.

Rain purses her lips and shrugs, she's already learning to play the game. She says she doesn't know what happened to all the reprogrammed adults. They got killed. Children were never used in the field because the ones that lived , were subject to medical testing for organic -AI interface.

"Why would they do that to children?" Ellison asks .

An eight year old girl looks at him like he has just asked the most dumbass -basic question ever.

"Because the sentience programmes won't work without the organic interface, and they couldn't force The War to stalemate without the interface ( of course) "

"Hang on, please" , says Ellison, " So, John Connor deliberately got himself into Century Work camp to ensure Yoshiko Yamanto's survival , so that she can work out the programme that eventually forces The War to stalemate, because he already has prior knowledge the only possible outcome of the war, in which anything survives, is Assimilation- so living things, sorry I mean sentience, like you, evolve . Any point , the whole thing might go wrong and give the machines the definitive advantage, and that would end all life, of any kind, on earth.- And nothing is actually ever fixed, erm, predestined?

Ellison runs his hands through his hair. He folds his hands like praying hands over his mouth. It is a while before he speaks again : When he does he simply says- "That's got to be the biggest gamble in human history."

"Its was. It is ", replied Cameron " and John is going to have to take it again in few years time."

The car is pulling into a diner Cameron asks if Ellison wants breakfast. Maybe he needs to use the toilet facilities ? Ellison tells her the FBI will be trawling three states already, looking for a missing black agent and a blonde eight year old female.

Cameron glances into the back seat through the the mirror and says "Rain". It sounds like a command.

Ellison looks around and can't believe what he is seeing.

Rain's organic layer is darkling, her pigmentation chamaelon-like is changing, her hair is becoming curled, in front of his eyes she is taking the appearance of a child of mixed race. Under her organic layer her Polymetic Endo is reshaping itself , her facial structure is remodelling itself. It could be Ellison's own daughter, if he had one. (What he can't see, is, when she held his hand she automatically registered his DNA , and now she can even produce a compatible sample if she has to.)

Ellison shakes his head in disbelief. A deeper instinct tells him where this is heading.

To be continued.


	3. Chapter 3

s

**Hi, I've missed writing Sarah Connor in my stories. So in this AU fic. She is here in all her green-eyed glory. No Derek. **

* * *

**It's 1999, and if you've read the previous two chapters you'll know Cromatie's been taken out, and an eight year old T has accidentally turned up in 1999 from way after JD and the end of THE War . So why is she here?**

**I know, I said three chapters, but you know how it goes when you start writing this stuff.**

**There's a lot of excellent Jameron, loads of good action and war. This is a gentle look at another aspect of possible TSCC themes . **

**Please review and let me know what you think. **

**Thank you for reading.**

* * *

Ellison eased back against the end of the sofa and studied the eight year old girl sitting next to him . She was leaning forward, her arm crooked around her sketch pad with he side of her face resting on the table . A ringlet of dark hair had fallen down over her brow. She looked exactly like a normal child, absorbed in her drawing .Rain's face was lit by calm concentration and only the subject of her pencil outlines would appear disturbing to anyone who had no idea of her real background and experiences. Even though his world had been turned completely upside down in the last forty eight hours , being here with her made Ellison feel calm,

Cameron had ordered them to stay within the motel complex. They were booked in under the name Jameson. "James Jameson", Ellison had said out loud, " Renetta Jameson" - they "sounded plausible".

Cameron explained she would create a preliminary set of identities around the surname Jameson before she returned. More solid identiities would take a little longer to manufacture.

For now, they should move around the , motel complex but not bring any undue attention to themselves. The FBI were looking for a missing black officer and a white eight year old girl. Since Rain had changed her physical appearance , degree of exposure might actually benefit them, in the short term.

Cameron turned sternly to Rain before she left, " Don't eat too much OK, you're not going to be used to any of it." Rain recognised in her "you are in so much trouble young lady voice."

Ellison thought he detected the slightest irritation in Rain , to him it seemed she was thinking out loud :" As if I would"

* * *

After Cameron closed the door to their room , Ellison counted to ten and let out a huge sigh of relief. Rain mirrored him and did the same.

" She scare you too, huh? How come you get scared?" Asked James.

" Yep. She scares me. I get scared." Nodded Rain and she let out another sigh.

He had to keep things on a level here. - "Rain, You know you called her General. In the future, my guess is you don't make general without winning some serious battles.- Am I right"

Rain paused to consider the question. She knows one way to answer this kind interrogative question is to repeat part of the question in the answer.

"You are right , she has won some serious battles. "

Rain decides not to add, being disciplined by John Connor's, wife, his "right hand  
Metal " and second in command , is never something to be taken lightly. Cameron is Purebuild - Metal, through and through, and she is not to be messed with. Worse of all, Cameron was retuning to their motel room with Sarah Connor later that day to assess the situation.

Rain had to think. All this was all her fault, and that stupid HUD of hers was absolutely no help whatsoever in this situation. Why on earth was she designed to revert to core programmes in extreme situations? Why had Deep Time gathered her up and placed her here, in 1999? How could she even explain this?

She "stared" out through a waterfall of digital code and tried to focus hard on the exterior reality her senses presented her.

* * *

When Ellison suggested maybe they go look at the outside world she gladly agreed. It would help take her mind off processing half a million Terabytes of useless, unwanted information, endless simulations and logic chains.

Intuitive sense was so much more straightforward and relevant to the situation. She only hoped Sarah Connor possessed similar emotive sense and intelligence when she walked in through the door.

* * *

Outside, they walked a little , Rain went over and stood on the wooden terrace, both hands on balustrade looking out over the motel lawn. Trimmed grass turned to green shrub at its borders, beyond the fence a the green faded into the red of the desert and hills.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. She held her face to the sun and shut her eyes. It was unfair,all this was so beautiful, so perfect, as it was meant to be, and most humans alive in this time took it completely for granted.

"I've never seen they sky like this before" Rain says. "It's grey, like Metal, most of the time. If there even slightest blue everyone stops what they are doing and looks up. We see the sun, sometimes, its hazy , there for a moment, then it's gone. -This is amazing can we go and look, please ."

Rain takes her shoes and socks off, Ellison does the same. They leave them under the wooden decking.

They stroll barefoot across the grass. It's been watered , so it fells soft under their feet. It's been years since Ellison has done anything for the simple sake of enjoyment. Every now and then Rain stops . There's an insect clinging to the underside of a blade of grass. She crouches and gently bends the blade towards him so he can see.

Over the next hour barefoot they walk around the edge of the Motel lawn and garden borders , touching leaves, stopping to watch a bird weaving through low tree branches, They pick up a fallen leaf . Sitting on a wooden bench they hold it against the sky and study its filigree structure.

At one point a cricket jumps and she grabs his hand to follow it . Ellison is entering what he would call the Kingdom Of God, through the eyes of this child, as if it were the first time he was seeing it for himself . He's never had children of his own.

When they had finished walking around the motel gardens Ellison asks what Cameron had meant about not eating too much.

Rain explains : She doesn't have to eat very much to maintain her organics. She can eat any amount but it is processed and the surplus remains unabsorbed, that would be an unnecessary waste . There is a serious shortage of certain kinds of nutrition even years after The War, so she and the other Assimilants only ever consume what they absolutely need. It's the same with water, that's still pretty scarce . Assimilant kids get the recycled water. centrifuged and sterilised, in the school, it's too "rough: for human consumption, humans lack the necessary filters. She tells him they get one shower a week to remove the surface grime., bacteria don't thrive on our organics, we don't smell.

What about clothes,do they get washed?

We, keep our own uniforms clean, she says, we wash them ourselves, there's big sinks and we use the recycled shower water. We mend everything as well, and our boots.

Ellison thinks about this. Rain has been brought up in total austerity . For him to offer her anything outside that strict discipline would be against her nature. At the same time, he reasons , some degree of late twentieth century consumerism might be an necessary education.

"Rain, You know, kids here get pocket money. An eight year old gets guess what, every week , to spend on what they like?"

Rain guesses , "A dollar?"

"Not quite , maybe five to ten dollars is the average I give you say, ten dollars, and maybe if we go to the motel store together, you could figure out what to spend it on. It's not really a lot of money, and whatever you don't buy today you get keep the change."

* * *

They spend three quarters of the next hour examining everything so very carefully , checking prices, turning items over to look at the labels.

Rain goes straight to the clothing section. She neatly picks though a wire bin of holiday T-shirts, testing the stitching on the seams . She decides she wants one: dark blue plain , no printing or logo it has a strong seam. This one she finally says, it's $ 2.99, and these a pair of grey jogging bottoms, $3.99. She looks over the shoe-rack, "and these:", a pair of black Plimsoll shoes $2.99. She folds the clothes puts them together in a pile with the Plimsolls on top. They are the best price to quality ratio clothing in the shop. Ellison notices she's looking around to make sure no one else intends to try to grab them before she can get to the counter. He imagines a group of kids in the future being left a pile of used uniforms and clothing in The Stores and having to sort through it and fend for themselves.

"You want these? "Ellison asks with a wry smile. Rain" he bends down and whispers "Parents buy kids clothing, you don't have to use your pocket money. If you want these and a few more things I'll get them for you, that's what mum's and dad's buy."

For a second these a uncontrolled flash in Rain's eyes, then she hides it again. Ellison picks up the shopping basket, "come on" he holds up a pair of shorts, "these?" Ellison realises he is actually enjoying clothes shopping.

After half an hour they have a basket of carefully tested and chosen clothes, Rain looks at what all the other kids are buying. Again with Ellison she carefully selects an sketch pad , a set of pencils, a Disney Magazine- there's a free pack of crayons sellotaped to the front. She's got $1.87 left. She hovers over the sweets, what does he like? . She's reading the ingredients on the side of a packet of the packaging. They are all complex carbohydrate and sugars. She can process those.

* * *

Rains been doing rapid line art and tearing off pages. They spread out on the carpet in front to Ellison like a story board for a film. Nothing strategic, she's not stupid . JD mushroom clouds, Century , the first view out of the open gate of Century, Exodus across a future desert complete with half-fallen skyscrapers , The Basedormitory, Classrooms, Evolved T8's in corridors.

Suddenly Rain looks up - she puts down her pencils and whispers "We've got Brass, incoming" . Rain stands up and glances at him suggesting he does the same. When Ellison reaches under the cushions for his gun she holds out her hand and spreads her fingers to stop him . She mouths the word "no, Brass,not Metal -it's them ". .

The door opens, Ellison recognises the Connor Clan. Green eyes lock onto him . He can feel Sarah Connor reading into him She moves to one side.

Cameron shuts the door behind them and they stand against the wall weighing up Ellison and Rain. Ellison immediately recognised John Connor, older than the last photograph he's seen. John's filled out, he's good looking young man.

Almost touching against John's shoulders, hips moved in towards his, Cameron. Ellison notes their body language- Cameron and John stand next to each other like any other young couple he's seen, they're not siblings, anyone tell see it a mile away.

--  
Rain can't quite evaluate what she is faced with. It's like walking into the First Book of Sarah. There's the "Holy Mother" herself, as she was, before The War. General John Connor himself . There's General Cameron Connor . The most important figures in future history, barring (Yoshiko Yamanto) are here in this motel room with her.

(Readers should know- Holy Mother is a term of reverence, but also one of dark soldierly irony. Sarah Connor Chief strategist', organiser prior to Judgement May, Metal hunter, killer with due cause, chronicler of the events leading up to JD - a Mother Teresa she never was.)

Sarah Connor looks every bit as "scary" as she is described in the stories.

John Connor appears "kinder" than he ever will in the future. In the future, Connor only ever shoves his head in the school or dorm to bawl out a group of kids. The last thing he said was "if you can't sleep, go to standby and give us all a break, and don't climb the wire again, do I make myself clear?"

As she's been drilled, Rain salutes John and waits for him to tell her "at ease." He doesn't.

"Ok" says Sarah , " John's not in charge here, yet. I am. Just sit back down please. And you too please Mr. Ellison. "

Rain glances at John for affirmation, in tune, both ( future) General Connor's perceptibly nod their heads.

Uncomfortably Rain and Ellison sit back down on the edge of the sofa. The Connor's pull the chairs from under the dining table, and sit facing them. Sarah turns her chair , with its back facing them. Her arms rest over the chair back. The two "teenagers" sit to one side and listen . Ellison calculates there's a fifty-fifty chance he's about to wind up buried in a trench in the desert , with the back of his skull blown out. Even though he knows "what" Rain is, he's concerned for her "safety".

"So", asks Sarah , "What have you two been doing?"

"Mr. Ellison's been reading to me and I've been reading to him. He gave me some pocket money and i bought a Disney Magazine from the motel store earlier. " Rain points to the open magazine on the sofa.

"Cute, but isn't that a bit basic for you? I mean , according to Cameron, in your own way, you understand Quantum Physics, Time Travel , the meaning of life consciousness and everything, which I might add I don't, so what is it about a Disney Magazine , Rain?"

"I enjoy being read to by Mr. Ellison. No one reads to us like that in school. I mean they do but it's always about us learning something, never just for the sake of it. I enjoyed reading to Mr. Ellison too, he listens and asks questions which he uses as teaching tools. I would like to be taught by Mr. Ellison because he is patient , he doesn't get angry, and he can show me a human perspective at the same time. She pauses and thinks about things for a moment. "I was born human and I would like to understand more about this aspect of myself . I was born in Century Sarah. "

Rain turns and glances at Ellison and flashes a quick fragile smile . It's the same kind of smile Cameron sometimes reserves for John when they both think Sarah's not looking. Sarah knows Metal blanks everyone else on the planet , including herself , except when it wants something . It only relates like this when its bonding with a human.

Sarah nods "So what else?"

Ellison cough and points at the sheets spread out on the floor. We've been drawing. If I may ? "

'Be my guest" says Sarah. " But hang on a minute, " . "Do you know what Rain is Mr. Ellison, I know you see an eight year old girl with an appearance that could be your own daughter, but I need to know you understand what exactly it is you are sitting next to, and you've been reading , she glances at the open Disney comic em Princess Jasmine stories to"

Ellison involuntarily stiffened . He also knows Connor picked up he didn't like her calling Rain an "it".

"She's a Terminator , James, and a very advanced model. Three years I came up against one of these. Rain's combat chassis is based on that model. That thing very nearly killed me John , and "Uncle Bob" the reprogrammed terminator protecting us. It took a 101 to bits in front of us. We got lucky. Look I'm not saying anything hurtful for the sake of it, she already knows this. "

"Rain , if a SWAT team or Greys turned up here now and started attacking us in this room what would happen to them? What would have to you do?"

Rain looked down at the floor.

"I would have to and get John, you and Mr. Ellison to safety and then neutralise them." She replied, reluctantly.

"You notice James, Rain doesn't say _try_ to neutralise them. By that you mean kill or incapacitate them?"

"Yes."

"And you could do that?"

"Yes."

"Why, why would you have to do that ?"

"To prevent, your capture, to prevent my technology being exposed in this time"

Sarah repeats what Rain has just said, " You would have to do whatever it takes to prevent your technology being exposed in 1999?"

Rain glared back defiantly at Sarah, " If I may ask Sarah, what would you do if you had my capacity in that situation?"

Eyes deadlock . Sarah Connor knows she is going to be the first to look away.  
"Just to let you know what you are taking on Mr. Ellison." she says before she does.

"One final thing Rain, you have never lived with a human group have you? Cameron described a kind of compound where there's loads of little T's, like you, running around generally causing havoc. Who looks after you all?"

Rain knows where this is going but she is determined to tell the truth.

"We have Evolved T8 handlers, and when we are old enough we get to spend time with a human family ,in-between training schedules. I was going to be fostered next year."

"And what happens after fostering and training Rain?"

"We get attached to a Technical Combat unit ."

"Mr Ellison", Sarah presses her point," Tech- Com is the equivalent of a Special Forces Unit , little girl or not, this is a piece of their military hardware. Right now I should order her to a find a nuclear bunker and shut herself down to the date she left . What happens if her unit comes looking for her in this time? Have you even thought about that.?"

Rain looks apprehensively at Ellison, "They won't , they won't come looking for me, they don't know where I am."

Ellison tries to break the tension he points to the first sheet of drawings laid out on the floor. "From what I understand This is Judgement Day . How many people died ? Tell me again please Rain" He asks gently.

"Two point five billion ,initially" Rain replies" We calculated another billion died in the years after the primary exchange from related illness and malnutrition, that is before the work programme was organised and enacted ."

Ellison continues gently probing :"And this is one of the work camps, Century camp, the main camp in the southern USA, you told me at any one time it held up to two hundred and fifty thousand inmates?'

"Yes" Rain nods

"What's that" asks Sarah pointing to a large industrial complex outlined at the back of the picture. "You saw that?"

"I saw that . It's the Rendering Plant under Incinerator Number Three." Rain blinks rapidly and bites her lower lip gently.

Ellison is barely concealing contempt at Sarah.

Sarah stares back at Ellison as she speaks, directing her next question at Rain. Sarah has to know for sure.

"You saw John in Century?"

Rain swallows, stares straight past Sarah at the door she is holding back tears. "My mum worked in John Connor's team. I used to see General Connor. My mum and a group of the Century Resistance were caught , interrogated and killed, eighteen hours before the Storming Of The Wire and the start of Exodus." Rain points to the next drawing " "That's the open Southern Gate out of Century, after Liberation- I was carried through that on Liberation Day. "

"Eighteen hours, before. Why did that happen like that Rain."

This time Rain has had enough, She almost shouts back at Sarah, " because that is how long John knew my mum could possibly last before she talked. Everything was brought forward, scrambled... " Rain off can't hold it back: you don't don't talk about stuff like this in the future, not this way, everyone knows instinctively that everyone else will have lost family and loved ones.

Huge globs of tears start spilling down her face, but she holds her head proud and upright, not wiping them off with her hand.

Sarah doesn't see Cameron touching John's hand. There the slightest touch and a gentle squeeze.

"Mum", John interjects" "Come on, that's enough now. "

"Sarah", Cameron speaks calmly, " I have been assessing Rain's combat potential. If she had intended any harm to John or yourself, she could easily have assassinated at least one of you, harmed possibly both from where she is sitting before I had time to fully react. She is also aware of that"

Sarah turned to Cameron with a look like she was about to hit her across the face. " For god's sake Cameron you mean to tell me you knowingly brought us into this room exposed to John to this possible risk, and doesn't even bother to mention it. Fine" stands up "That's just fine Cameron , how many percent certain were you Rain was telling truth before we started questioning her, exactly? "

Cameron holds an immobile expression and stares back at Sarah." approximately  
97. %"

"And the other 3% ?"

"I had to wait to see how Rain responded to you."

"And now you are certain?"

"Yes I'm certain."

"How !"

"Because I can determine Rain started life as human, not like me. Rain recalls her human memories as a child, they are not perfect , like a machines . Look let me show you. Rain- If I may?"

Cameron picks up a pencil. " Incinerator Number Three , is depicted all out of proportion, You've drawn a bigger chimney and smaller processing plant, it really looked like this, There were vents here along the roof , you've missed most those off, there were steel access steps here, there were seventy five panels on the main roof, you've drawn fifty two. The wire on the outer Southern gates of Century looks like this, not how Rain's 's drawn it. I inspected Century after liberation . I have recall of these images. Rain's has a CPU , an interface, processing human memory, but it can only build on what organic memory was there. This is not accurate Machine recall."

"So what was it you went on Cameron, before you saw Rain's pictures?"

"Rain's story is not perfectly plausible, "watertight" unlike a machines would be . We would have devised a simpler explanation, not some tale about her messing around near TDE and Deep Time shifting her back here by accident. She would perhaps have a message for John Connor, or a task to perform but she states she has no mission, no orders , no defined purpose for being here."

John Connor has been sitting quietly, taking it all in, "Rain" , He shifted his weight in the chair and looked at her. This John Conner is so different to the General ." When you told Cameron Deep Time placed you here, what did you mean by that ?

Rain glances at Ellison. There's a sense of relief spreading in the room.

"I can't explain it, right now except I feel I should be here." she keeps her answers simple. The full answer is complex and she's not sure they would understand.

"Rain, Sarah cuts in, " I really want to believe you,what you can , or claim to feel is not enough for us to go on, understand please what is at stake. "

John catches Sarah's gaze and holds it. She's just done the Sarah Connor acid test and it's necessarily cruel . It's what kept them alive and he and Cameron trust to it. All she needs is reason enough to trust to her intuition.

"Mum, there's something else, we didn't want it to sway you before you spoke to Rain. Take all the random events leading to her and Mr. Ellison being in this motel room. When Cameron contacted you , you ordered her to leave Mr. Ellison and Rain here and to come and fetch us. That wasn't Rain's decision,. You'd agree. Right? It's a random, Rain had no control over your decision as to where she was going to be now."

So , Sarah stretches out her arms, and looks down at the pictures on the floor. " I don't get it ."

"You see we , well Cameron, is now regularly hacking the motel guest list to check for threat or FBI . Guess what she finds?"

Sarah shrugs.

" Two blocks away , we have an eight year old Yoshiko Yamanto and her parents. They are using this as a holiday base. We are sitting less than one hundred yards away from the girl who grows up to be the woman who figures out the sentience programme that Rain tells us , and Cameron can confirm , ends "The War. There's no way this situation has been a Metal set up . It couldn't be "

Sarah Connor is out of the door, but before she leaves, Cameron glances in the wastepaper basket. There eighteen carefully folded sweet wrappers in the bottom. For a second she looks over at Rain and winks.

* * *

It is agreed Rain and Ellison are to stay in the motel. The Connor's have booked in to observe until the Yamanto's leave . Like everything else it's a gamble. Cameron has already hacked the FBI system and rendered a set of visual sightings of Ellison and Rain (in her previousCaucasian incarnation). It appears Ellison's used he's also used his credit card in and They' ve left a virtual trail heading north up through Arizona. The FBI won't come looking into Red Hills Motel.

--  
Ellison persuades Rain to have a shower. He keeps telling her in one way or another, there's so much water in 1999 , so she's not not wasting it. He makes sure there's a row of warm, soft towels on the showroom rail .- Rain, he says through the door, he's realised he will never have to shout for her for hear him, "stay in there more than three minutes OK ?"

"Five minutes?"

"More than that- at least seven"

When she comes out he's made her a cup of hot chocolate. Its cooling on the table. When Cameron told her earlier she's not going out on Patrol with her, Rain had looked almost crestfallen.

The thing Ellison can't get over is every time he looks at Rain he sees himself in her features. She's got his eyes, his colour his jaw and cheekbones. He keeps looking at her. He can't help wondering from what she modelled the rest, her "mother's" side . He's not ready for that answer, yet.

"So you don't sleep?"

Rain shakes her head, "No"

"I do." he yawns, "and I'm going to have to be in bed pretty soon. You going to be OK?"

Rain smiles and nods, there is a line of brown hot chocolate on her upper lip. For the next eight hours she's already decided she will sit on the sofa thermally scanning through the wall. In her simulation every so often she get up and pads soundlessly over to the window and scans 2K out into the desert, she listens hard. She checks her combat systems on a cycle of eleven minutes. They are 100% functional. She simulates a variety of T8take-down scenarios, she works the Yamanto location into her simulations.

Between POS functions Rain repeatedly holds Ellison's face in her imaging, rerunning the things they did today, particularly him explaining "Mums and dad's buy this" in the shop. It makes her feel "good inside. She silently thanks Deep Time for bringing her here into 1999 . She knows, core deep, nothing is ever going to harm this man whilst she is around.


	4. Explaining Thank you for explaining

Ellison got out of bed , tied the belt around his dressing gown and stood poised to open his bedroom door . The last time he spoke to Rain had been in the middle of the night . He'd woken out of a series of ever-constricting nightmares. In the one that woke him up he'd gone to Cameron's car , the logic of this dream compelled him to open the hood . In the full slow motion and wired intensity only a dream can create, the broken endoskeleton reanimated and sprang out at him with the speed of a rattlesnake.

Ellison had woken with a jolt of raw adrenilineand lain still until he dared to move. When he could move he got up and went to the bathroom. Rain had been standing by the living room window in the dark. He saw her outline, and had asked her what time it was . "Three-thirty -seven" she'd precisely informed him . She'd sensed his disorientation. He followed her voice-"The bathroom is four steps forward and the light pull cord is on your left behind the door". When he emerged she said "Goodnight Mr. Ellison."

Rain's manner reminded him of a nurse speaking quietly so as not to wake the other patients on her ward.

This was typical of Ellison's quandary, one moment you could be talking to Rain and she would seem like a normal child, she could seem anxious, or become absorbed in something the way only a child does . The next she was following some protocol . It reminded him of his own behaviour when he'd been on protection detail. It was that remoteness and absolute confidence , her certainty that he found disconcerting.

It was now morning and sunlight was pouring into the bedroom . For the last quarter of an hour Ellison had lain on his bed asking himself : what sort conversation do you attempt make with eight year old military cyborg after you've said good morning? More importantly what do you do with one during the rest of the day? Beyond the FBI, Ellison had little real experience with children and practically none interacting with cybernetic organisms.

He gave up debating the question and went to the bedroom door .

Rain was standing by the window . Before he'd even taken a step she'd immediately turned to face him waiting for him to open the door. She was bright-eyed and awake, just as he'd left her last night when he'd turned out the light and gone to bed. That's when she'd explained she could see better in the dark without the light on.

"Hi", he couldn't help smiling when he saw her , there was something about her being around that made him want to smile. " You er, you had a good night."

"Yes, I had good night , thank you . "

"Anything to report, erm , no bad guys out there?"Ellison scratched his head and ambled towards the breakfast bar.

"No . No bad guys. Did you get back to sleep . Did you sleep OK?"

"To tell you the truth, yes I did all things considered . Thank you for watching over me as carefully as you did. "

Rain looked over at the bar. " That's Ok . Would you like some cereal. I'll make you some cereal if you like."

Ellison raised hand so she could see it over his shoulder " No, I'm going to make you something . Now , what would you like for breakfast Rain? I know you don't regularly eat anything solid, so , fresh orange juice? Tell you what, you sit down at the table, I'll pour it and we'll have breakfast together, yeh."

Rain sat at the end of the table , she began sipping the orange juice in time with his eating cereal so they could finish together.

She seemed contemplative , both her hands around the glass and she was looking at something intently . Ellison noticed moments when Cameron "switched into neutral" like this as well.

"Hey what is it?, what you doing when you guy's do that ?"

"No-thing." She glances up and then stares back an area on the table just in front of him. Ellison thinks she said nothing, he doesn't understand no-thing yet . "You asked me last night what I meant by Deep Time."

At that point Ellison made a decision,he leaned back in his chair turned his shoulders so so he could peer out of the window.

Unfazed by his apparent lack of enthusiasm for a debate about the nature of time and consciousness Rain continued, . " I know the Deep Time maths, but knowing DT maths isn't the same as understanding it. So Last night reduced it down to the simplest form of linguistic expression. You want hear it?

"Yes I , do Rain, please, but not right now " He pushed the curtain further back

"What is it Mr. Ellison ?"

Outside their chalet room a group of kids carrying everything from inflatable arm bands, rubber rings, and water pistols, were heading along the path towards the pool,

"Nothing , it's nothing. I was wondering," Ellison sat properly back in his chair and placed his elbows on the table resting his chin on the back of his hands " What games do you kids play in the future? You know baseball, soccer hide and seek, anything at all like that?"

Rain looked up, she hesitated . She was almost stumbling on her first words until her confidence got behind them and let them flow. " There;s some games I guess I can tell you about . One game we have, we get choppered out in shutdown and get left in the desert . We have to run back. Its usually 50K . There no location signals so we have to navigate by orientation . There's Lock-On as well, that's like a 25K Run Back and get a lock on targets , that's good,"

"Whoa, wait , what are your targets." Ellison asked with the non surprise of FBI training .

"T8 Handlers play the roles of rouge or reprogrammed warlord Metal, sometimes human Tech Com play at Greys. We use Laser-Lows so no one gets hurt, they don't even blind organics." Her voice trailed up on "organics" as if she's letting him know it's a game where no one gets hurt.

" Warlord Metal? Doesn't sound like fun , that' sounds absolutely like combat training. So, erm what's the best game you ever played play huh?"

" The best we game we ever played was"- Rain seemed to pause to think- :"Dam-Wall ."

"Dam Wall : what' did you do?"

"My class , we got air -shuttled to out to this old hydro dam. It's called The Hoover , it's been totally Scavved-out for scrap, but the concrete structure's still intact. There' s not much water in it now, I mean in the future, there's still a big pool at the bottom. The water's too contaminated for humans to use anyway, but is OK for us to be around. We walk on the wall road, take off our boots and socks, stand on the edge and and jump in. Then we climb back up the wall ."

Ellison's eyes widened. Rain registered his surprise, and she quickly went on to explain.

" It was supposed to be like a Sies-Study class ."

"Uhhuh" Ellison mumbled. Rain read from his expression, James didn't really get Seis-Study, so she tried to make him an outline.

"During JD many concrete structures, tower blocks, bridges, dam walls got totally siesed-out, it was the nuclear shock wave so we get to survey them to see what the damage is. We use it for practice, The Hoover's been surveyed by loads of classes and teams . On the climb back up from The Splash the we all take a strip of the concrete wall each and scan for fractures and siesmi-fisures, them we log the data and make a report."

"And you climbed back up on ropes?"

"No not ropes" , Rain looked at her finger tips, "We extrude endos and drive then into the concrete -you make like these sharp little spike- hooks at the end of your fingers , or in the palms of your hand, your toes , knees, anywhere there's a point of contact . She glances up at Ellison. She's a child again looking for approval" they're really safe , you even can hold on with one hand . Concrete's easy, steel like bridges is so hard and you slip , you have to hold on to the edges of steel with finger and body pressure."

Ellison decided not to press on the extrude endo's bit . That was getting beyond where he wanted to go right now , but he got the general picture " I thought you said it was a game."

"That wasn't the game that was the Sies-Survey lesson . They let us play Dam-Wall after the lesson . We made two teams, one at the top on the wall defending , one at the bottom attacking. Those climbing up -the attackers, have to get past the defending team at the top. You try to pull you opponents off and if one of the attacking team make it to the top then the defending team have to all go to the bottom and attack , your team becomes the defending team. It's a really fast game."

"So you're like all climbing around like spiders, pulling each other off the face of the Hoover Dam and throwing them them into the water at the bottom? That's l, how high ?"

"221.5 metres from the top into The Splash" Rain replied instantly. "It's a real rush on the way down. "

"And that's a game!"

"Uhhu," Rain shrugged

"Dontcha ever get hurt?"

" No, as you're falling the concrete gets wider towards the bottom so you kick yourself out , otherwise you 'red-streak' the wall ." Rain leaned forwards nearly whispering to Ellison . "Jeanie , that's my friend , she Red-streaked and got this big cut on her Skin all the down this side. Took three hours to heal." Rain frowned . "Someone fell on top off her before she could kick out."

Ellison smiled as if red-steaking maybe was a normal thing . "And who's supervising you kids when you're doing this?

"Evolved T'8's , our handlers."

"And they're Ok , not like that thing Cameron took out ." Ellison shook his head thinking about it , it was the most frightening "thing" he'd ever encountered.

" No definitely not like that. Evolved T's , they're not reprogrammed, they choose to be Evolved and use the sentience programme. Really they're OK with us, especially when we get away from Humans. They're all Purebuild like Cameron, we're Skin- Metal , but they treat us like Metal-Metal sometimes when were out. "Rain looked around as if to make sure no one was around and carried on talking in a quiet voice . " Don't tell John Connor or Cameron, but , when we're out of Base range , the T's let us co- fly the choppers, drive the AVs play games like, Dam- Wall , full contact lock -on and they save us stuff like chocolate, find us clothes as well."

Ellison put a finger to his mouth. "I was wondering, humans ever treat you bad hhm?",

"No , not all of them, only some do." Rain lowered her voice, like she didn't want to talk about it .

" Say, come here , look out the window with me ."Ellison said it in a voice she'd heard a human parent using towards its child.

When she stood next to him placed his hand on her shoulder, just letting the weight of it rest there. She turned her head and looked at him . There was no aggression in his expression, simply kindness.

"Now , look at all those kids, " Ellison continued " running around , playing- what did you call it? -Lock-On , with water pistols, jumping off that big board into the pool. I know it's a bit basic for someone like you, but do you think you could learn to do basic, and maybe enjoy it. Maybe we could spend today doing basic.?"

"Maybe" Rain replied in a quiet voice. For a moment she closed her eyes so all she could feel was the warm touch of his hand on her shoulder. He made her feel like she was important to him, he listened, maybe even cared. No human, except Yoshiko Yamanto had ever put its arm on her shoulder before and spoken to her like this . Yoshiko was like their mum in many respects. You could be crying and Yoshi would be really busy and she would stop what she was doing, pick you up and give you a hug. The T8 Handlers all genuinely cared for Yoshi as well. It is no wonder. In Century Yoshiko wrote the sentience programme that allowed them their consciousness and helped bring an end to The War. Her consciousness and what she figured out that made it work ,formed much of the new basis of theirs. Yoshi- replaced Skynet.

Eight year old Yoshiko Yamanto shifted her position in her chair. She needed to get a better look - a beetle was threading its way through the stems of grass between her bare feet. The grass had been watered earlier this morning, and this beetle was a last straggler in the army of disgruntled wet beetles making their way to the dryer,more sunlit areas of the motel lawns. It was small, black on top, with shiny metallic blue abdomen.

When she'd first spotted the beetle , she'd put down her book and began wondering why some beetles had these particular bright colours. She would look up its name later. She didn't mind beetles when they crawled over her feet.

Yoshiko hadn't realised how long she'd tranced out, thinking about beetle coloration and what it had to do with natural selection. When she looked up there was a women with dark brown hair standing on the path in front of her.

Yoshi didn't know weather it was appropriate to smile or not in this situation so she decided it required her blank expression. This usually prevented " normals' from trying to talk to her. Yoshi really hoped this woman wasn't one of the Motel Reps. They were like teachers and tried to make her join in games with other kids . It took at lot of explaining why she couldn't .

Yoshi looked to one side of Cameron. Behind Cameron the kids were climbing up the ladder and sliding down the chute into the pool. The heat shimmered around them and the water they were splashing about in was the marine blue of the tiles behind on the wall . It reminded her of the sea, or rather how the sea would look if it were abstracted into a blue painting on a white background. They might as well have been behind a glass wall.

When she looked again Cameron was still there in exactly the same position. Yoshi asked - " Are you like me?"

"Yes, I am like you" Cameron replied. When she turned her head Cameron noted Yoshiko didn't yet have the long scar running down her left cheek , Cameron updated her files.

"Oh ", Yoshi glanced over Cameron's face and then quickly back to the kids who were now trying to push each other off the water slide. Rule number one :Never trust a normie straight away, even if they say they are like you. Some lie.

"What is your special interest?"

"Maths. Metallurgy. Ballistics . Related subjects" Cameron kept her voice deliberately monotone- "What is yours?"

"Fossils Dinosaurs Geology .Evolution." Yoshi looked down. She'd told normals a thousand times about her special interest . Most thought it was weird and didn't want to listen. Except at school in special lessons she very rarely met other children like herself, certainly not older ones.

Cameron scanned around the area : "Where are you parents?

"My Dad's gone gone to the shop, my mum's over there, in our room. She can see us out of the window."

"Why did they position you and leave you here ?"

"Because I don't like crowded places like shops and my parents get angry when I freeze up." Yoshi looked down almost mumbled her words like, like much smaller child.  
" Did you ever freeze up when there were lots of people about ? " Yoshi glanced up at her for a second .

"No. I don't freeze up."

"What are you reading ?" Cameron pointed to the children's book.

"Skellig ."

Cameron stepped forward and held out her hand. Yoshi felt the hairs on her forearm stand up. Cameron kept the exact distance needed for Yoshi to be able to calculate she wasn't going to try to touch her. Random physical contact would make a young Yoshi feel really uncomfortable. She wouldn't always be this sensitive.

Yoshi handed her the book giving Cameron the excuse to sit down next to Yoshi, in order to examine the book. Cameron studied the cover. There was a human-painted image of a man with birds wings. The book was about a male human child discovering a strange human-hybrid creature in his garage. The genre definition : Fantasy. Ages 11 upwards

Cameron quickly flicked through it "It looks interesting, I especially like the description of the garage with the cobwebs and the Chinese meal numbers . Do you like numbers "

"It is interesting and I like numbers." Yoshi replied, noting Cameron had placed the book down gently in exactly the location on the plastic table Yoshi had picked it up from to hand it to her .

Cameron leaned back into the white plastic chair , placed her arms on the sides and looked out at the children playing in the pool. She waited for Yoshi to mirror her posture and settle. Soon both were siting immobile and if you looked carefully they seemed to be staring at nothing in particular

"My name's Cameron , What's yours?

"Yoshiko"

"Your Surname?"

"Yamanto."

"Mine's Phillips, Cameron Phillips"

Without any necessity the full Target Acquired had come up again on Cameron's HUD . With the machine equivalent of mental irritation Cameron hit Override . Maybe in the future the grown up Yoshi would help sentient terminators fix this redundant override issue. It was ...annoying. She would bring it up with her if she ever got back.

Mrs Yamanto emerged from her room . One of her sandals was not correctly attached to her feet. She was trying to walk fast but this was impeding her ability to do so. Cameron could read a low level of anxiety in the her expression as she drew closer.- she looked as if she were trying to squint into bright sunlight.

"You Ok Honey?" Yoshiko's mum stood in front of them and placed her arms on he hips. There was a pause, and Yoshiko didn't respond

Cameron decided to break the silence " Hi . Mrs. Yamanto , I'm Cameron" . When she spoke her face became animated and she flashed her best smile.

Yoshiko's mum looked to Yoshi for explanation Sill staring into immediate space Yoshi said in a very level voice - "Cameron's like me"

"Oh I see , well I wouldn't have guessed."

"Why?" Yoshiko's brows distinctly dew into a V as she frowned

"No real reason honey." Mrs. Yamanto flustered " I just wouldn't have guessed , mummy's not very good at guessing these kind of things. That's all."

Without moving the rest of her body Cameron looked up at he from her chair . " If it's Ok Yoshi and I were discussing her reading book. It's called Skellig. It was a interesting conversation ."

Cameron's manner seemed professional, like one of Yoshi's teachers. Maybe Cameron worked with kids like her daughter, maybe that was what Yoshi meant when she said Cameron was like me. Sometimes it was difficult to tell.

Mrs Yamanto ran a finger horizontally down over over her mouth : " Well yes of course," Yoshi's mum glanced back towards the morel room door , "I'll be right over in that room there, 161 if you need anything . My husband will be back shortly." She added.

On the way back to Room 161 Mrs Yamanto paused once, bent down and slipped the strap of her sandal back onto her ankle . She glanced over her shoulder at her daughter and this strange young woman. Little Yoshi was now talking and moving her arms to emphasise a point, like they had taught her in school. The pair of them had begun discussing something with the curious intensity High functioning Aspergers Children have when they get together. If it was Yoshiko's turn she would be talking about Fossils, damn Fossils though Mrs Yamanto - Thanks to her daughter's current special interest Mrs Yamanto knew the name of every Ammonite that had every lived or conceivably ever have lived until they became extinct . IQ of 187 yet Yoshi still couldn't consistently tie her shoelaces properly or catch a ball.

Yoshiko looked to one side, and then at Cameron . She inclined her head and scowled slightly "My mum was was lying when she said Mummy's not good at guessing things like that wasn't she?"

"What makes you say that Yoshi?"

"When she lies , the way she talks changes. Her voice becomes higher and she swallows and she talks faster than she normally does."

"When most people lie their speech patterns alters and distorts in the way you describe. Some don't , they are harder to detect. You have to learn to listen more carefully . You are going to have to learn to read their facial expressions too."

"How ?"

"I can teach you the basics if you like." Cameron considered this a moment. "Yoshi- you can always say no, but I am here with my family on a kind of holiday. My niece Rain is here , she is like us to some extent and she would like to play as well. She is interested in Fossils . When feel you are ready, I will introduce you. "

"Who else is here?" Asked Yoshi suspiciously . She didn't want too many other people to have to deal with.

"My uncle James, my step mum Sarah and my stepbrother John. "

"Is John like us?"

"No. John isn't like us.

"Is he normal?"

Cameron deliberately paused, " No , none of my family are exacltly normal by any conventional standards. "

Yoshi thought for a long time before replying- " I would like to meet Rain. Thank you for explaining."


	5. Metal Empathy

2031: Yoshiko Yamanto strokes the side of Rain's cheek. Yoshi's held her back after class. Rain loves Yoshiko, all the kids do.- ". Rain, I remember your gene-mother . She had these beautiful green eyes, like a panther's , that's what they reminded you of- all strong and powerful. She would have loved you, like she did your brother , with a fierce love like nothing else on earth, it was that strong. That's why her picture's up there on the classroom wall. She was one of the bravest humans who ever lived. Now, I expect a A star assignment from you about her , first thing tomorrow, OK. "

* * *

1999: Cameron: "...don't play games with me young lady . You don't ever lie to me. I know why you are here. You think of all people, I do not know who your mother is? Rain look at me: You do not look at her any more than you have to. You do not touch her anymore than is necessary, and whatever you do, you do not tell her. She is not to know, or even be allowed to guess . It is the same with Ellison. That understood solider?"

Rain nods. There are real tears watering in her eyes. "Yes General . I'm sorry ."

"Right. I'm not "angry" with you , but you are on the next shuttle back , and if any more Assi -kids try this, you tell them I'll be taking them back personally, on-shuttle as well, you got that?"

"Yes General."

"Now come here." Cameron holds her real tight, one arm relaxes and she stokes the top of Rain's head, smoothing down her hair. "Hush" Cameron says, "come on now, this isn't the way you imaged things would be with her is it?"

Rain rocks her body and shakes her head in a kind of a big no.

"Now you've met her, what do you think it would do to her if she finds out?"

"It would hurt her." Rain whispers.

Cameron kisses her on the top of her head. "I will get you back, I promise, but you've got to keep this together soldier, you've got to keep this together for now- Think you can do that for me?"

* * *

In the motel gardens:

John mirrors Ellison's stance by rests his arms on the wooden railings. Beyond the wooden terrace the motel gardens looks fresh and watered. There's the smell of cut grass, damp soil, the sun's on it now . A faint steam hanging like a thick ether spreads the scents of flowers and wet leaves. Children , oblivious to anything except the moment they find themselves are splashing in the pool. You'd think it will always be here, in moments like this, and knowing it's not going to be here, creates a painful reverential silence for it's temporary beauty. One day this will all be black deserts and shifting sand. Both men know this, now.

Ellison breaks the silence.

"Your mum look kind of wired back there , she going to OK left alone with Rain?"

Ellison notes when John thinks deeply, he's got a thousand yard stare into something else he can't see. Even when John's looking at him and thinking, it's like he's never taken his eyes off that horizon.

"She's Ok , she had a thing about Cameron at first , but she's getting better at not showing it. She's she's got issues with machines, that's all."

"So" , Ellison sighs, "Yoshiko Yamanto. Was she on your radar before Rain showed up?"

John smiled, looked Ellison in the eyes. John's got much older, wiser eyes than the face. Ellison's already noted these as well, they give nothing away, except quite confidence.

"No. Cameron didn't mention her, but Cameron's got her own methods . There's things that are going to happen, I know, she doesn't want me to know yet, I can kind of read her now . I've learnt not to ask. Things happen, reveal , explain themselves themselves when they need to."

"She ever told you what happens to you?

"No." John shook his head. " Nothing she doesn't want me to know, not yet she hasn''t"

"You ever ask?"

"Asked a lot at first . Cameron's got this way of answering , so at the end of it I feel like I know less than I started. You found that with Rain ?"

John studied Ellison's face. Maybe he had a tell -Ellison went all serene looking like he was in a church, when he was not feeling comfortable with concealing stuff in the here and now .

"Yes I guess. I 'm "future-curious".

"We just live with it, yeh." It was almost a curt reply , almost half an order. John's emphasis on the word "live" hit him, and he cracked a smile. He was being lectured by a sixteen and a half year old kid.

"John", Ellison s changes the subject with polite diplomacy.

"You know with Rain, I get the feeling there's so much more going on in her head . I can almost sense l it. Is that the same with you and Cameron. Do they feel things like we do? Is it , you know real?"

"You have to ask , What do you think ? Do you think Cameron feels anything for me? Sure she's here to protect me,sometimes when were on our own, we talk , we talk a lot, and I've never talked like this to anyone before, anyone, and she understands what I'm saying, what I'm feeling, she even knows what I'm going to say next, and when I'm with her I don't want to be with anyone else, it's like no other girl could measure up. She'd have to at least have a theory of mind , my mind to do that, and that requires something parallel to feeling and understanding"

"Except .?"

Jon anticipates Ellison's next move. "Except, part of you, me, is reminding yourself she's not a girl , and that's the same issue you have with Rain?"

Ellison breathed in deeply through his nose and out through his mouth, the word slow like he's thinking them through carefully before letting them out of his mouth:

"John it's like this. This is so hard. I Always wanted, kids, a daughter. Marie- that's my my ex, she couldn't have kids. That was one of the reasons we went our separate ways. Most of it was me , the job, the asshole I was to her . Now here's Rain , she falls out of the sky on me one day, she looks like she is my kid, acts like she is my kid and I'm finding it hard to know what to think. I'm even thinking Marie would have loved her , I don't even normally even think about what Marie would have wanted anymore, you know its been five years, So what's the deal , is it all , you know, what's the word"

"A simulation?"

"I guess that's the word." Ellison nods, like he's trying to see where " simulation" fits into the new world view he's having to rapidly construct.

John turns away gardens, learns back and puts his elbows on the rails. He's a more mature figure than his age.

"Before you can get your head round what they feel, you've got to get this stuff first. " Ellison , is listening intently, and there's not a trace of his FBI cynicism designed to needle away at the soft side of teenager's confidence.

"What I've found , if you go out in public with a terminator, you have to be so switched on, all the time . You've got to learn to read what they read in a crowd, see what they are looking for, get to understand how they work . Other week? I was in a grill, in the mall with Cameron, and you have to learn to think I'm in a beef burger joint with a T-class terminator -T's are the serious ones , not some hot girl whose my best friend, and you've got to have that in your head all the time

He looks at Ellison. His expression tells John he's getting this so far.

"In the grill this guy and his friends get in the queue, a fraction before we do and start looking back at us , then they're making eyes at Cameron because of how she looks ,hot. Now she doesn't like that, then they start trying to phase me on them looking at her. She likes that even less. I know in about two seconds she's going giving them serious looks back , and if one of them starts getting aggressive , what's running through Cameron's head is there's going to be four guys rolling around on the floor ,maybe clutching at where their balls used to be."

Ellison's lips part with a smile, he's realised away from Sarah the kid's not in teenage role any,more, Ellison's talking to John Connor.

"So what do you do?" Ellison raises his eyebrows,

" You have to whisper something like "Cameron , just don't , Ok"- and she doesn't. Then you say maybe "put your arm around me, " She'll just put her arm around me and make like I'm her boyfriend. You hold back and wait for the line to move on, pretend you're reading menu's , someone else gets in the queue,those guys will stop staring and start thinking about food and it all calms down, like nothing ever happened.

Ellison notes the way he said "make like I'm her boyfriend ." Like is the normal thing for them to do. It's a piece that gives him the flash of the full picture. All those glances, nods, body postures, Cameron and john briefly touching each other when they're talking together.

"So, you just explain what's happening to your erm, terminator , and say hey " don't react, take it easy and no one gets hurt? " Ellison puts out his bottom lip as he muses.

"Yeh I guess that's about it. It's like an order,it doesn't sound like one, but it is. Unless there's a real fire fight and then they're in charge, and they won't listen to you anyway. Cut your finger bad and they're pushing upstairs tot he medical cabinet. Just go to go with this stuff. Oh and they know when you are lying ."

"They know when we are lying!"

"Yeh, they do this brush-their-hand-against-you-to-confirm-thing, as well. When they do that it's 100%. Totally nailed."

Ellison let out a slow whistle of breath and brought his hands together. He never figured them for that.

"And the other thing?"

"Ok Terminators won't ever see some things the way we do. You can't argue with them on this , you can't reason with them, it's something they just won't ever get. Period . It's mostly to with why they shouldn't terminate some people in particular. It's all down to maths. Example I save the planet, so in the scheme of things guy A's life is irrelevant . Why _can't_ I kill him she asks?"

Ellison's eyes widen, "So what do we do?"

" You just have to be firm, and not give in and always have a counter argument prepared just in case. Its always about a mathematics and cold logic versus ingenious human solution."

"So basically if I sign up for this ,I spend half my life arguing the value of human life with a psychopathic killing machine?"

"Not, it's not as bad as that, they learn real quick, quicker than we to, you've got to keep an eye on them, you've got to understand it's what they were built to do and all this broad human empathy stuff is totally an alien concept to them. They get the specifics though, quite quickly."

"Anything else I should know?"

"Yeh, might as well tell you , from time to time they get interested in really weird stuff .

"Like?"

"Like they might have sat up all night reseaching the history US military in boot manufacture since 1914. You get up in the morning, You have listen, ride and it out, and because she's interested, so that makes you interested. Terminators probably think most things we ever talk about are irrelevant, but they always make like they're genuinely interested in what you are saying. It's give and take."

"They don't sleep either do they" Said Ellison runs his hand over his mouth .

"No they don't sleep." replied John "Most of the rest is as normal as it gets though.",

Ellison tries a random shot, tries to judge the balance of how serious and yet surreal all this is. "You two going to ever have kids , you think , John?"

He gets it right because John laughs, and looks down at the wooden walkway and shakes his head. When he looks up he says

"Tell you what, Mr Ellison, how about I let you ask Cameron that one, ? "

* * *

_See these eyes so green_  
_I can stare for a thousand years,_  
_Colder than the moon,_  
_YOU WOUNDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH ! ."_

_Judgement made can never bend..._

Sarah Connor has her back to Rain. She's ratting cutlery in the sink. Rain offered to help, held out her hand. John explained to Sarah this latest model has a full tactile range of communication, like a childs . This makes Sarah shudder, in fact it makes her feel like throwing up.

Sarah turned away and just said, "No. You. Don't .Touch, me."

Rain sits back down at the table. Motionless she stares at Sarah Connor's shoulders. The motel room implodes and time pulls her back , to that place, again.

Liberation Day. Rain's four years old. She knows something big is happening outside because she can hear mortars and heavy artillery falling thirty kilometres away along the Metal's lines. She can pick it up on her audial and feel it through the soles of her feet, through her finger tips against the metal from of her cot. She's sitting on the edge of her cot. There's the high pitch whine of a swarm of HKs overhead.

She's not cold or hungry or even tired any more, she hasn't felt that since she came around from after her last operation. No more nightmares. She's awake and scared though.

Her room is a tiny white cell,a plastic cot bed and no window. She can hear the other children on The "Medical" Ward getting agitated. Some kids are crying. A T600 is talking calmly to them.

She cant walk anywhere because the Metal's done something to her , maybe she'd got sick, and that's why she's learning to all over walk again. There's this funny screen behind her eyes. It helps her think in pictures and see words. A Grey's been showing her how to use it. She can spell anything or count anything now, draw anything and she doesn't really know what it all means though.

There's still metal showing trough her arms and legs a skin is re growing over it. It was all metal to start with, and her legs, and bits of her tummy her chest, , its inside her face too, she can feel the smooth outline of her new "cheekbone", its still bare.

Two hours, fifteen minutes and twenty seven second pass, she can count time down to the nanosecond, but she doesn't know what time on this scale means. The artillery has been getting nearer, now there's the sound of aircraft overhead. The behind-the-eyes screen is a waterfall of digital numbers and pictures she doesn't understand and can't read.

Out in the compound she can hear shouting . Nobody should ever shout like this. It is dangerous to shout, every prisoner knows this, even kids as old as her.

There's a whoosh overhead . Outside The incineration plant explodes in huge woomph of yellow flame. In the cells Rain can hear metal roofing sheets falling, clattering all over the compound. There is yelling . She injured moaning , calling for help.

Then there is the sound of automatic gunfire, mainly .762 rounds, and then more multiple detonations . She hears the reply of the mini guns in the observation towers. Now there's a bark of a anti aircraft from outside the compound the Mini Guns fall silent, tanks and armoured vehicles are breaking through the wire and shelling the Metal's defensive positions inside Century .

She can hear voices in the corridor. Someone's telling a T8 called "Winston" to rip open the doors.

There's humans gathering outside. She doesn't know yet , some of the T series have accepted the sentience programme so she doesn't understand why Metal is responding to humans like this. It is unimaginable to her they would take orders from a human.

She hears the first door being ripped off and then the silence followed by shouting" Oh for fucks sake, dear God no, no , no you don't touch her , she' might take you arms off. Wait for Yamanto."

More T8 footsteps come down the corridor and they've begin picking up the other children from out of the broke cells . The children are crying and screaming, human voices are near hysterical. Angry adult voices are shouting "what the fuck did they do this for? There shouting at a Grey, she recognises his fumbling voice, he's one of them that came and taught them how to use the screen.

"What did the Metal do to us?" Rain wonders.

T8 footsteps directly outside . Her door ripples then groans as it bends outwards .A T8 is standing in the frame. Rains combat systems override her awareness . It goes void -black. She doesn't remember how she fought, all she remembers is coming out of it being carried up the steps and out into the light. Strong arms are wrapped her. The T 8 is bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds to his face. His name is is "Winston" , , and then he says "look at me, not there." but she looks "there". A uniformed Grey is on the floor behind her, his face pulp.

For some reason she feels safe. Out in the light, in the air , to her side a woman's voice. Recognised : Yoshiko Yamanto . Yoshi's telling her to hush -"everything's going to be OK." She catches a fleeting glimpse of Yoshiko and when she does Yoshiko touches her face, before the T8 gets back into its stride. Yoshi's thin, tired, but real pretty.

There is small arms fire in Dormitory 8. The outer compound is full of tanks and humans wearing uniforms carrying guns. Smoke is rising an the skyline of Century work camp has been altered beyond recognition.

Rain is being carried toward a personnel carrier by the main gate. In the middle of the compound a limb less torso is on its back of a T600 is single mindedly trying to move on remnants of its hips and shoulder servos. It reminds Rain of a leg less beetle, hopelessly trying to dig itself into sand . A semi circle of humans are taking turns firing a heavy calibre rounds into it. Humans are giggling and laughing , shouting at it. One fires a shot and it casing flies off, he say's "you know what , man, that's gotta hurt. I could do this all day."

Then the man with the turns and looks at Rain, his smile collapses, and says one word "Fuck". He raises the gun and points it at Rain. The T8 stops, and she can feel its arms drawing her nearer. A big hand covers the back of her head. She knows the gun can't hurt her.

A group of uniformed soldiers are running towards them and shouting. One tells the man to put his gun down,

The man with the gun has got big wide, staring eyes. He says "What .The. Fuck .Is .That? "

The uniformed soldier replies " It's one our kids, Metal did this ,and if you don't put that gun down soldier , Sergant - T- fucking 8 Winston who is carrying that little girl, is going rip your fucking head off in the next five seconds, so put the gun down, now! Connor wants them alive."

Rain looks away from the man pointing the gun out over Winstson's shoulder. She knows the gun can't harm her. She can see so well now, over the T8's shoulder. Things further away used to look further away , when she wants them to, they come closer now, and images become much clearer and more detailed than ever before. When she wants to , she can see in the dark, she can switch the way she looks at stuff see the heat coming off things as well.

Three hundred metres away, over Wilson's shoulder, strung out in the wire are the cruciform figures of one the human resistance units inside century. Wire, naked dead humans, black glass - ash desert blowing in from behind, and iron grey sky behind . They sway lifelessly in the desert wind.

Rain learns later in a history class, that Liberation Day happened at all, meant those strung out on the wire never broke under interrogation. They died keeping their silence. For humans, they were very brave.

In Century on Liberation Day Rain is looking over the shoulder of A T8 They're in a stand-off between ex -prisoner pointing a heavy calibre gun at her head . Over the T8's shoulder she can see they are cutting the dead out of the wire, The dead look so uniquely peaceful and they fall into the arms of the cutting in the way only the dead can.

**Recognised**. This is the last time Rain ever sees what is left of her mothers face. Before her body is cut out of the wire and falls shaping itself he arms of a the woman who lifts her down and lays her out on the ground. Metal had pulled out her mother's hair, her teeth and her eyes, before she died.

* * *

"Rain , Rain "

Rain could hear Sarah Connor's voice. She'd zoned-out, gone back to Century, that's where she sometimes goes, to visit her mum.

Rain did her best to smile and looked attentively into the green eyes of sarah Connor.  
She was determined to please Sarah Connor. She offered to scan the rounds in the ammunition to test for defects that would lead to misfire. There was a neat stack of 9 mm  
on the living room table. Rain had an idea, this might please Sarah.

"Sarah, would you like me to make some of these 9 mm into hollow points for you?"

"Wha, what did you just ask me?" The corner of Sarah's bottom lip felt like it was going to twitch with nerves'

"Would you like me to convert some of these 9 mm into hollow point rounds , please Sarah?

Sarah looked at her, into her green eyes burning. Rain processed every micro expression. She knew Sarah Connor was angry- but Rain didn't understand the reason why.

"Why would I want you to do that?"

Rain continued staring at the rounds with a childlike interest and abstraction. When she spoke it was as if she were telling Sarah about something they did at school, like making a potato clock , it was almost a child's sing song voice. When Sarah glances up she notices though Rain's eyes are amber brown, in the light in the living room they are flecked green. This whole thing of an eight year old tin can, a pararody of a child, supernaturally calmly, sitting there, freaks her the hell out.

" Because , Sarah, our handlers have found in testing against early series T's fragments of lead shrapnel smaller than .12 micron can force its way between exposed joints, such as the neck orbital, and knee, and slow them down. You can use hollow point reduce their movement and damage the proprioceptive sensors in the joints. You can then use the heavier gauge rounds to pierce vulnerable casing areas. The later models were joint shielded. The older ones aren't and are vulnerable to this tactic. Would you like me to make twenty hollow points for your Glock? You could then go on to use the modified twelve gauge armor piercing once you have slowed it down."

"Rain?" Sarah Connor blinked , this was , like some flat intense hyper real medication dream straight out of psyche ward. Sarah Connor let out a hiss before she spoke -" I gotta clean the kitchen. You just do, what you ( she thinks "Goddamn well ") like till John gets back get back, OK."

When Sarah looked up , Rain's carefully cutting into the head of a 9 mm round with the edge of a sharp point she had extruded from her index finger. She seemed oblivious to Sarah, back in her own little world.

Sarah wiped down the table in the kitchen for the second time Why the hell, for once in her fucked-over life , couldn't she have a normal eight year old girl in the house? Instead fate had sent her a small terminator and she /it is sitting there, in a motel room calmly carving out the heads of 9 mm rounds with a piece of surgically sharp extruded liquid metal sticking out of it's index finger .

For a moment Sarah Connor wonders what it must be like to be like Rain, to be a " tin can", not to be full of human fear, anxieties , hurt , pain and just to be able to focus, singularly without that kind of nagging mental distractions. They are oblivious to this ,  
they don't get us in this way.

She looks at her watch, John and Ellison will be back in less than five minutes. She can stand it that long, being this close to weird Metal.

Sarah has no idea where Rain, ( or Cameron for that matter), sometimes "go" inside their heads. She hasn't learnt yet, Terminators are very precise creatures when it comes to showing what they want you to believe they are thinking and " feeling". Once they've grasp this empathy thing, they aren't inclined to totally ruin someone' s day by ever telling them what really is going on in their minds .

You have a nice day there, Sarah Connor.


	6. Chapter 6

_ Hi. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing. That last chapter was a bit dark wasn't it? This next chapter is about Yoshi . She's a hyper intelligent Aspergers autistic. If you haven't been following , in the future she's the one who figures out how to write __the __AI sentience awareness programs. They are the one's that break the stalemate and end The War. She goes through Century with John and the whole plan is so touch-and- go , at any moment it might all fall apart. Here Cameron and Rain, are bonding with Yoshi- Yoshi has never experienced an-in group feeling in her life before. She's the perpetual outsider and goes to a special school. She doesn't know what Cameron and Rain "are", she takes them for HFA's like herself . Yoshi should feel in the group with them -In the future it's the numerical abstraction of _Yoshi's_ consciousness that forms the platform for their sentience, which is a "voluntary form of reprogramming" . I imagine Cameron and Rain have a deep sense of being with their cybernetic " Eve" as well. Let's hope no stupid aggressive human tries bullying Yoshi today , shall we?_

When Ellison and John got back to the Motel room you could have run a finger through atmosphere waiting for them inside the doorway. Rain glanced up at them from the living room table . When she did , she made these big, hopeful " get me out of here" eyes "please!" . John quickly weighed the situation up . He said," Come on you, let's go find Cameron". He didn't even wait for Sarah's response. When the door closed behind him, Ellison was left standing, arms crossed. He could read situations like this very well . James had been the lightening rod in his former marriage, and with certain female co-workers in The Bureau ,over the years as well . 'Let angry women discharge themselves gradually' was Ellison's preferred M.O. Ellison sat on the sofa, picked up a newspaper and waited for Sarah's emotional static to find him . At least there was no articles so far about any Connor's and related terrorist charges. Then you never know, he reflected turning the pages in the rest of the newspaper .

Rain insisted on walking at least two paces ahead of John. This mainly gave him a good view of the back of her head , not much else. Even though she totally controlled ,"underneath" John could sense she was almost angry, certainly hurt, and to his mind this went way beyond any emulation arising from her programming . There was a personality, like the ghost of an eight year old child somewhere "in there". He caught glimpses of her glimpses of, her when her metal shutters didn't snap into lock-down.

John noticed Rain moved with the same precise balanced steps as Cameron: Her limbs loose , and never quite at rest, like a dancer's , gracefully alert, yet relaxed . As she walked she inconspicuously scanned from side to side, and kept turning to look unobtrusively behind. John decided her body language was actually hard to read, only a trained martial artist would pick up on what she was doing, and even then no one would expect that level of awareness or ability in an eight year old girl. She was on covert protection detail. Rain was doing her first escort duty and it was with General Connor. She was on seriously high alert.

"Mum give you a hard time back there Rain?" John asked.

"Not really, I've had worse,. I understand the reasons underlying Sarah's behavior towards me". Rain replied in matter of fact monotone and without even turning around.

"Mum's like that with too sometimes . It's a storm. It blows over. "

Rain didn't answer. There was a family, bright holiday clothes and smiles the sort you see wandering around carrying towel bags and an inflatable crocodile. They were on collision course with Rain, and it was clear to John she wasn't going to be the first to step off the path.

"Come here". John put a hand on her shoulder and brought her in closer. Rain looked up slightly and , shy frightened smile, flickered across her face. The holiday makers brushed past.

"So" he spoke quietly "do you think you could deactivate you combats whilst you and me are walking like this? You' were frowning, almost scowling a moment ago, you're going to frighten people if go around doing that, get them asking, hey there's this really beautiful eight year old girl and she's scowling, now why is she doing that? That would drawing attention to us."

Rain's face relaxed, slightly

"You're an infiltrator right?"

Rain kept her face immobile as she spoke, " I'm T-class terminator, human sentience interface, my serial code TOK....HI indicates I am equipped for both combat and infiltration... General ". She added, screwing her lips together and staring intently at groups of families walking across the grass in front of them to and from the car park.

"Yes, but , you're more like an infiltrator now, in this moment? And , I'm not The General, here and now,I'm just John., You know, I'm sixteen, I get really stressed by all this , my mum especially mum. terminators and world leader, future general , stuff. "

"Can't be easy for you." Said Rain scanning the entrance to pool . She seemed to be pretending to be half listening to him whilst analysing the sign- was an arch of the word "The Oasis"- fibre-glass Egyptian hieroglyphic style letter lettering. She read her HUD analysis , all Assim-kids describe what their HUD's sarcastically- according to Rain's HUD : "The Oasis" was clearly some kind of water based containment area for human offspring judging by the noise emanating from the structure. There were analyses of vocal patterns, estimated numbers, potential weaponry, chemical and hormonal analysis, it went on forever - Why didn't her HUD just say "swimming pool, children playing, no threat".

John broke back into her thoughts :"You want to hear a terminator logic Joke?

"I 'm sorry? "said Rain

"Do you want to hear a Terminator logic joke?" Rain

She turned her face away from him and scanned the car park to the side of the pool. 348 and makes of car and readable number plates automatically downloaded themselves into her memory and began cross referencing in recent files. She scowled. John carried on with the joke anyway .

"OK Why do terminators keep crashing their trucks in the forest?"

"I don't know, is it because human mechanics inefficiently carried out repairs to heir vehicles?" Rain wasn't even looking at him. She had zoomed in focusing on a group of adults standing at the small bar, outside pool entrance. Zero non - improvisable weapons, they were talking about a child named Marie's ear infection, which she had apparently picked up in the pool.

"No, no it's not about mechanics it's because Terminator's sometimes can't see the trees for the woods."

Rain turned her head stared at him, politely.

"Its a reversal of a logic, puzzle," John explained, " not seeing the wood for the trees, wood is another name for a small forest . They are the same thing with too different names, the jokes about logic . Was it a sort of Terminator joke?

Rain tilted her head and looked at him, he could swear if she had her hair pony tail it would be flicking in irritation "According to my HUD I have a choice of responses to this , aside from those choices, I can trace elements of humor in your statement ."

"Look Rain", John pulled her in closer and rolled his arm around her shoulder "my mum's like that with everyone, I'm so sorry but don't take this out on me or anyone else, she doesn't mean it and I certainly don't . I just want to chill out for a bit."

They walked in silence Rain seemed to be thinking

"They tend to be long sequential numerical anomalies and logic gates John, and they don't translate well."

"What ?"

"Terminator observations of human illogicality and inappropriate responses . - We make and compare detailed files."

You do?

"Sure we do "Rain nodded

"Are there any examples of humorous human illogicality that do translate?"

"Uh hum I guess . Your joke was actually kind of Ok , by the way, John ." Rain glanced down at the path and looked back up. When she looked at him there was almost gentle mischief in her eyes. "So, here's my joke. "

They strolled on for a bit, the path ahead was empty

"Promise not to shout at me John?"

"Would I shout at you?"

"In the future you do."

"OK sorry in advance for shouting at you. What's the joke?"

"This is different from the future joke , not quite as funny. It's got trees in it though."

Ahead of them was a group of -trees Rain calculated they were going to be under in the centre of the canopy when her joke fetched its climax, out. When they were ten steps away from the target area she asked :

"OK, John-What is white and kills complex biological organisms when it falls out of trees?"

"I don't know Rain, what is white and kills you if it falls out of a tree? "Ok, this a tree- ambush related terminator joke thought John, " Erm snow? Polar bear? I don't know"

They reached the centre point under the tree branches, in less than half a second Rain let go of Johns arm on her shoulder and 360'd . There was no one within line of sight she shot a glance up overhead slow enough for John to register . Rain wrapped her arms around lifted him, then jumped . To John It was like being gripped in a steel vice and simultaneously being knocked sideways by a blast of compressed air. When they landed Rain , gently twisted and turned absorbing the inertia from of his body, as she was doing this she looked into the branches and then rapidly down to the spot where they had been standing a moment before and shouted : "FRIDGE "

She let go and examined the startled, winded expression on his face. His head was down resting his hands his knees . He had a startled , puzzled expression on his face.

" A fridge is white and will it kill you if it falls out of a tree if you are standing directly underneath"

John heard her child's voice taking over the monotone , and this combined the shock of what had just happened to him worked its way out of John as burst of laughter. Rain started giggling.

"I'm so going to get you back for that Rain. John said "What's that joke in the future where I shout at you ?"

"Not telling you,- but John: how do you keep the future leader of mankind in suspense for thirty two years, four months seven days and five hours and fifty sixty two seconds?"She giggled again.

"OK Rain" John shook his head "I know do this one, nice try though. Come, on let's find Cameron and Yoshiko."

* * *

Cameron and Yoshiko had spent the last hour modeling behavioral indicators of holiday- makers . Yoshiko enjoyed this. It was probability game. She really got into it with Cameron.

In fact Yoshi decided, in the last hour, she'd would like Cameron to be her teaching assistant in her school. Yoshi could ask Cameron anything and she knew the answer. She did math, knew about Precambrian mitochondria, fractal patterns in ammonites, DNA coding , Cameron knew about anything. Cameron was so Aspie-facted, but totally cool with it. Cameron had wrapped herself in light blue silk shawl and put on some dark glasses . Yoshi thought Cameron now looked like a US Airforce pilot on leave. She was just so amazing, beautiful and Yoshi could really talk to her about anything

"Ok that group there Yoshi, male child , six to seven years old in the red shirt? They've just arrived, you can tell by their luggage and the way they are looking for directions . I'd suggest 87% their child's going to see that drinking fountain and stop for re-hydration." Cameron was deliberately letting Yoshi win some of the game to help build her confidence.

"87% Cameron, that's way too high?"

"Why?"

"Because of all the other variables." Cameron had taught her the word variables and  
Yoshi felt like a normal child would have felt opening a new toy from its wrap. Yoshi experienced the pleasurable rush of new learning , intensely

"His parents look determined to find their room. Erm there is queue at the drinking fountain, these factors might persuade him to wait until they find their room."

"Any other reason?"

"They are carrying bags with food and drink those aren't shopping bags from the motel mini shop- he may have had drinks in the car for his journey."

"Very good Yoshi, so what probability would you give?"

"I'd put it between 40 and 50%."

The child was hauling one of the families cases with both hands, he seemed determined not to let it touch the ground the mother held the printed map pointed they trudged on , not even noticing the drinking fountain

"Well done Yoshi , that was really observant , I didn't consider the bags. "

And what about those two, walking towards us on the path see the black girl and the young man in the dark tee shirt, How old would you say the girl is?"

"I don't know- is she twelve."

"And the man ?"

"Erm, Yoshi struggled twenty two, twenty five?"

"No , way off the mark,you are guessing in this field aren't you Yoshi? Don't worry I can teach you some simple rules to help recognise ages. Those two are John, and Rain. Rains eight and Johns sixteen and a half. Rain is like us- Yoshi, do you think would you be Ok if she comes over. John's going to sit in front of us where I can see him."

"I think I would I'd like to meet Rain . Why has John got to sit there?"

"So I can watch him, it's like the game I enjoy watching John. He wants some quiet time on his own."

"I understand said Yoshi, Cameron thank you , you explain everything so well. "

Rain walked up and stood in front of Yoshi, holding a deliberately blank expression so Yoshi could see she wasn't going to overload her with social cues and bombard her with the demands like normal make . It was a of silent Hi, in their world.

"Humans!" Rain said she a sigh then fell gracefully onto next to Yoshi the empty lounger.

"What have the humans done now ? "Asked Cameron , matter-of- factly

"Nothing specific , John's Ok, Mr E.'s Ok, It's the rest of them I don't get , sometimes, that's all,"

" Ignore me , Rain looked at Yoshi, " I'm just overloaded and need some quiet time." She covered herself in a beach towel and shut her eyes laying on one side facing Yoshi.

When Rain half-opened her eyes she steadily gazed at Yoshi , Yoshi said "I don't get "humans" either, I get overload, they are so stressful . Is that what you call them in your school? We call them 'Normals', but we call them humans as well sometimes, you know, on "beam me up days"" .

"Beam me up days?" Asked Rain opening her eyes wider, and stretching her arm out.

Cameron, filled Rain in : " It's a reference to a popular science television series fiction series called Star Trek , I've watched it on Late Channel. Basically it's about humans getting into conflict with other species in a faster than light -speed space ship. There's one cool character, he's only half- human , they call him Spock- What's the beam me up actually mean Yoshi ? I changed channels before I got to that "

Yoshi got really excited about this, "One girl in my class, Elizabeth Wrens ,she's is really into Star Trek. We watch videos sometimes in her dorm.- "Beam me up" refers to an atomic destabiliszer. They call it a transporter. If the Enterprise their ship is is in orbit they uses the Transporter to break things down at an atomic level. It transmits them as a focused beam of particles from their ship through space and somehow reorganises them as exactly they were on the planet's surface. Its quicker than the Shuttle Craft.

"Oh" said Rain, and covered her nose with edge the towel , She "blew" out of her mouth so the corner of the fabric lifted and flopped back down on her nose" - " that is so Newtonian- it would never work. If humans ever designed and built an atomic destabiliser I'd take the shuttle craft any day . Oh no wait, they would probably have engineered that as well and it would have something like doughnuts for guidance systems . I'd stay on the ship." Rain's eyes grew wide with mock worry- "Yoshi they didn't construct the ship as well did they?

Yoshi nodded seriously and thoughtfully, even though she recognised it was a game.

" This has so got got to be fiction. humans getting out of the solar system without colliding into the nearest planet . " She shut her eyes again and shook her head  
"Don't mind me Yoshi -I'm just having a bad day". Rain caught her gaze and unusually Yoshi didn't feel like turning away. Rain added - don't worry, we we get into orbit we can nuke them from space-Human's! " She sighed, " Yeh i-I'm only kidding" Yoshi murmured from under her towel.

Yoshi giggled . She decided Rain was definitely on of them. Cameron made an "ah" sound like she had just remembered something. She went in her bag- pass these along. Yoshi's pair, Rain your pair"

Through the rising haze of mid morning heat any passing holidaymakers glanced towards the three girls, seeing a highly attractive young woman wrapped in a blue shawl and two children, lain out facing them on sun loungers, covered just like Cameron in beach towels They were staring back at them from behind shades. If was as if the group of girls had a big, if subliminal do not disturb sign over their heads.

It went silent. All three of them became absorbed in scanning the crowd. To Yoshi i they they were playing a silent probability guessing game . There was no need for words. Rain kept shutting her eyes as if dozing off. .

"I think Spock's really cool." Yoshi said quietly after a while, she'd noticed her voice had changed because her muscles were relaxing, it was more modulated and she was copying Cameron's more precise annunciation of vowels.

Rain glanced over at Cameron for explanation

"Spock's from a fictional planet , Vulcan apparently Cameron explained, I Vulcan's being the most highly evolved species, their culture is based on logic. Spock's got pointed ears.

"Pointed ears? Why Cameron?"

"Their function was never explained in the part of the episode I watched."

They looked at Yoshi- "I don't know why he's got those ears " she shrugged

"Rain , don't you ever watch Star Trek ?" asked Yoshi.

"We get don't watch much TV at our school." Rain scowled slightly, just like Yoshi does when describing something awkward

"What school do you go to?|"

"I'm on an army base . it sucks." Rain rolled her eyes over at Cameron

"It's not that bad Rain. What Rain means is They keep people like us in separate classes on base, apparently we freak out the other nice kids and adults and they get scared.  
I teach in school sometimes. "

"They keep us in a cage, an it's electrified. Then they treat us like we're going start eating their light bulbs, if we get out ." Muttered Rain

"That's not true, they only have the fence to stop some kids trancing-out , wandering and getting run over by a tank. The electricity's turned off Yoshi, it was there before the school was built to keep the tanks safe-There's armored division right next to the school . Don't listen to her, she's only teasing about the electricity in fence. We only put it on at night as a security precaution "

"What's your special interest Rain?" Asked Yoshi, changing the subject.

" I was into Fossils, I still am though not as much."

"That's mine !" said Yoshi

"But, lately I've got into writing this story"

"Oh", Yoshi frowned, how could anyone loose interest in fossils and geology?

"It's based on evolution though."

"Is it?"

"It's looking at what happens over the next forty years , I've worked evolutionary theory into it..."

It's in evolution of Rain's ideas Yoshi. Cameron intervened." Rain's worked really hard at it. Do you want to hear her story?"

At Yoshi's school no one was allowed to talk about their special interest in class time , but she was on holiday now, and Cameron , who was a " classroom assistant and teacher ", was suggesting they talked about Special interests so it must be OK.

"What's your story about?"

"Its a kind of science fiction. Its about robots."

"What kind of robots"

"Well, in the further I think there's going to be robots with humans against another group robots. Eventually which ever becomes the most successful species are going to be the next stage of evolution on from original humans. My guess is some kind of hybrid."

"Wow that' is amazing!"

"Why is that amazing?"

"I've been thinking about all this as well . Do you know what I think ?" said yoshi,, 'scanning' around to make absolutely sure no one was listening, "I think computers inside robots will get really advanced, like a brain, and be the next stage, some kind of special computer that helps them think like us , only better and quicker . Maybe they don't get angry and do weird "human" stuff and hurt each other all the time."

"That's exactly what I thought" said Rain

"How would you make one though?"

"I don't know for sure, but I've got a few ideas."

Yoshi looked excitedly at Cameron who was siting with a totally impartial expression  
She had been closely watching a group of kids young playing 1.2 meters away from John .

"Cameron could you do this , asked Yoshi" the idea of this is so brilliant, could anyone really do this ? Please , explain"

"I don't know Yoshi," Cameron smiled gently, she wanted to keep Yoshi calm, she'd got too many neural connections firing off in all directions to actual take anything in. , "It doesn't seem impossible. Maybe the technology's not around yet, but one day, who knows? Rain's even got a game based on her story, we can play it later if you like, it involves getting a bit wet."

" I don't mind getting wet . What's it called?" asked Yoshi

"Robot Escape And Evasion. Sounds good doesn't it?" Replied Cameron, smoothly.

Yoshi thought it sounded a great game, she'd never played a game she'd actually enjoyed before.

Yoshi shut her eyes. An image from a nature program flashed into her mind. She imagined the deep purring, the touch of a pride of lionesses when they found their lost cub . For the first time in her life she felt relaxed, she felt she belonged , and she never, ever wanted to be separated from Cameron and Rain.


	7. Chapter 7

Yoshiko Yamanto strode down the long blue corridor towards the war room. She was practically dragging Ash Ridley along with her. Despite being a seven year old Human machine interface with the strength of a small tractor, he put up little resistance. Yoshi stopped outside the steel doors of the war room and pressed the buzzer. CCTV had clearly picked them up, but the red "Do Not Enter" light stayed on.

Ash was starting to go into a stim cycle, his free arm was starting to shake and he bgan touching his cheek with his fingertips . Ash knew the General was about to "chew a piece of his ass. ,To make matters worse the lights in the corridor chose that moment flicker orange, This was like being back in Century during A-Plant power-up.

"Ash, Yoshi, spoke firmly and caught hold of his fingers and pulled them away from his face. "Ash, he's really not going to melt you down , ignore what the other kid's are telling you, they just trying to scare the crap out of you. He isn't like that, I promise ."

The green light flicked on, and the Automatic steel door slowly opened. Ash's perceptual systems zoomed in on the scarred face of The General sitting at the middle of the War Table. The table was a US relic of the Cold War, and about the size of small boat, parked sideways in the room . The General was ignoring them looking into an ancient computer screen.

At first Ash's legs wouldn't move . He felt Yoshiko tugging him along, two or three steps at at time. Once on the tiled floor the War Room doors closed behind them.

Without looking up the General spoke his voice was like gravel , "Captain Yamanto, Private Ridley, come sit down. The General continued to stare stared into an old G7 Macintosh screen. Apart from a note pad It was the only other thing on the enormous table . Yoshiko and Ash sat down opposite The General . Yoshi and the shaking-arm child were facing The General at the table's widest point. Yoshi smiled professionally and waited for him to speak.

Whilst they were waiting Ash fingered the table, taking random analyses to calm him down. A brass plaque was inlaid into the wood reminding Ash this is where the final treaty to end The War was agreed. He was sitting in one of the seats of the chief Metal negotiators and his feet didn't even touch the floor ~He had the uncomfortable sensation he was about to fall forward. A bank of gimbals in his HUD started dswinging wildly, and he waited... Time fractionalised, painfully slowing into nano seconds.

John suddenly looked up from the screen and directly at him . He stretched out suddenly brought up one foot and put it on the war table, and began checking his laces. It was a worn desert combat boot . The effect took Ash completely by surprise. Then John's eyes eyes locked onto him. If it wasn't for the eyes ,few would get John Connor. The last twenty years of the history of the human race-Whole continents on fire burned in those eyes, momentarily, and then there was the compassion, the full attention of one clear minded human focussed on you, focussed on seven year old Ash Ridely.

"So Mr Ridley John growled "why exactly are we having this conversation?"

"Mr" Ridley glanced at Yoshi who blanked back at him forcing his attention to return to John. There was a silence,

"Sir, General Connor, " Ash spoke quietly still nervously fingering the table top " Rain is missing.

"I have been informed of this . Do you happen know where she went?"

Ash looked down at the table, he had to tell the General, there was something that made him want to , to do otherwise would be akin to lying to the the Skin deity some had called God, not that Ash being a TI' series had a shred of faith in human deity, but one of his core programmes was to serve and protect John Connor.

Ash didn't feel the words coming out of his mouth when he spoke , they sort of just fell out-"Deep Time took her , Sir," he mumbled.

"So . let's get this into perspective Mr. Ridley . We have an eight year old , Class A female Terminator/ Infiltrator wandering around somewhere on my time line , one who simply shouldn't be there. Now basic non -linear temporal models tell us what?"

"That she might change something important.. "

"That she might change something important, and Ash you see those plaques, , there might be no treaty no end to The Tar. All this, me you Captain Yamanto, the Base, this beautiful planet, could be pile of smouldering radioactive rubble. That is how close we all came, Metal and human and I don't want us ever to get that close to anything like that ever again."

Ash swallowed, what served his saliva glands had ceased to function.

John placed his elbows on the table and leaned forwards.

"Ash, for your benefit, this occasion we know where Rain is, and the good news is we can retrieve her. It's unlikely there will be a next time if this happens again. Do we understand each other Mr. Ridley, the one thing you or any other Assim kid does not do is mess about with or near is Deep Time , at least until we say so. You do not go near those tunnels or silos again unless you have my permission."

Ash's eyes were involuntarily watering, he nodded.

"I'll take that as a yes then soldier, that's a yes ,what?"

"Yes Sir. "

John began scribbling a message on the note pad. (John to this day never sent messages by Email) He finished the note with a flourish of a signature. He spoke as he wrote-" Right, punishment and reorientation- You and the other kids in Delta 4 report to Sargent Mighinty , at 07:00 hours. You , Ash ,as I've given this note to you, you personally hand it to him."

When John skimmed the note over the table top Ash almost recoiled from it . Mighinty was a seriously bad-ass Skin who hated Metal. Rumour around The Dorm was , Mighinty would Plaz Dela 4 soon as look at them. Kids sometimes walked under escort though Armoured 18 to get to the main building. Mighinty just glared at them and they could hear him saying to his team, stuff like "they better not finger my fucking tanks."

John stared directly at Ash who was trying to process the implications of his orders. John verbalised them for him.

" For the next seven days Delta 4 are to report to Sergent Mighingty and you and your class are going to extract every single nut bolt and screw in his entire armoured division, scan it for fatigue and put it back as it is, or replace it ,if damaged. If there isn't the right size in stores you are going to work together and make perfect replicas. Simultaneous to this , you are going to clean the underside of all his vehicles , then you are touch up any micro-scratches on his paintwork . Above all of you are going to be ultra polite to Sargent Mighinty and thus teach him and his colleagues not to be so afraid of you in future. Do you think you can manage this task without sparking a major Metal-Skin diplomatic incident?

Ash nodded. "Sir."

John resisted the temptation to ruffle his hair. Ash was a polite well behaved kid. In fact they all were, as long as you took into consideration their inquisitiveness , IQ and fearless natures.

"Ok dismissed, and that is 06.50 hours outside the main gates Armoured 18, Private Ridley, not 07:01 -got that?"

Ash nodded and glanced up at Yoshi, She still blanked him but her left eyebrow raised a fraction and her head tilted towards the door. John pressed the button and the door buzzed open. Yoshi turned to watch Ash walking out through the doors, human feet would have echoed on the tiles in the big room. Even though he seemed to shuffle along, Ash's feet made no sound.

When the doors shut John let out a sigh of relief. He turned his full attention to Yoshi and he studied the face of strikingly beautiful woman sitting in front of him. There was an innocence about her . John knew she simply didn't get a lot of human interaction . She felt deeply uncomfortable when all but a few trusted humans, including himself stared at her intently . T's scanned her covertly and she much preferred this to the intensity of everyday human interface. Humans that didn't understand her, sometimes unkindly referred her as the "Metal's Ice Bitch" . Yoshi walked around most of the time wrapped an old USMC green hoodie and was often flanked by a "pet" T8. -T's seemed to fuss and become secretive around around her, like with no other human . Most humans, especially men gave her a wide berth. Rumour had it , in the early days a couple of drunken grunts ,from out of town, having no idea of her rank or who she was, had started messing with her in a corridor when she was on her way back from a meeting to Metal Repro. One is best left to to imagine the consequences of their actions.

"Kid's huh," John almost hacked the words.

"Kid's." Yoshi mirrored,

Yoshi- how many kids you got again?

"1068". Yoshi gave him her hardest Special Forces "yutired soldier, don't ever look tired" stare tying to hide her exhaustion. "Always protective of "her" kids to the last even with me." thought John. " Even with me ."

"You know what?

"What?" Yoshi inclined her head exactly like Cameron. A sharp pang ran right through John. God he missed Cameron at times. No rephrase that, he missed Cameron. John regained his composure "Come around here and look at this screen with me, please." Yoshi got up to walk all the way around the edge of the thirty foot ellipse. John shook his head "No you Yoshi , you you've arnt the right, climb over the goddam thing. Come on." Yoshi stood up and stepped carefully across what was possibly the most sacred piece of wooden furniture left on the planet.

On John's monitor CCTV footage showed her and Tracker walking down a corridor. As they walked they were touching, brushing against each other and when she got to a door. Tracker opened it and gently placed the hand on the small of her back ( for a second ) to guide her through. Another clip . They're smiling, and then Yoshi's laughing at something Tracker said. Her nose wrinkles when she does this. She touches the side of his face , almost the copy a machine scan for further data.

"It's Tracker. He was practising humour with me John." Explained Yoshi breaking eye contact with him and looked to one side.

" Appears to me like you weren't acting that hard."

"All human-metal interaction is a form of social acting and role playing with differing degrees of representation in any given social reality ." She replied, almost instantly. John knew how how this seemingly naive woman could suddenly shift gears and up the odds in a debate . Hell she could probably have beaten Skynet at chess if she'd ever put her mind to it.

"Yeh, whatever you say." Replied John " But tell me honestly , you weren't enjoying it."

Yoshi pursed her lips thoughtfully before replying ." I will not be dishonest with you John. I do not find Tracker's company unpleasant."

"No , dishonesty is not one of you stronger points, Yoshi. - I might add , I find Cameron's company extremely pleasant and I miss her very much- Did I mention we are married?"

"Everyone knows you and Cameron are married, why would you need to mention it?" Yoshi suddenly became suspicious, this line of questioning was how Normals lead her into unfathomable, illogical interaction.

John shook his head and smiled.

"OK look the screen again, what's this?"

A picture of a late C20th hotel interior appeared . John beamed " I found this in historical records, What is it? "

"It appears to be the inside of a Pre-JD hotel John, why do you ask?"

"No particular reason . Have you ever been in a hotel?"

"Yes, once, in 2004 ."

"Did you like it ?;

"No, I remember there were all lot of people eating in one room and it freaked me out."

"You never heard of room service did you? They bring food to your room, hence you don't have to eat with a crowd ." Somewhere very high in the 2031 command structure of the human-Metal race, survivor of Century , Yoshiko Yamanto eyed him with suspicion: Human "normals" would actually bring food to her if she asked them to in 1999 ? This had never occurred to her .

"Honestly " continued John" I remember this : Hotels had a internal landline. You rang someone called reception on it , and they did stuff for you."

"What's the number of the receptor ?" asked Yoshi cautiously suspecting this might be another one of John's wise-up lessons.

"Usually you dial something like 1 . And, it's "reception"- look I'm not kidding you on this Yoshi."

"Something like 1 ,ask for Reception." Yoshi nodded seriously like she believed him.

"Yoshi, here's the rooms , see for yourself"

John clicked on a window that opened to reveal a sumptuous suite, the extravagant luxury of which was simply beyond the comprehension of anyone existing post JD. "Get at the size of that bath, its called a Jaccuzi . Do you remember those?"

Yoshi nodded as John continued his guided tour. "You could fit two people in a bath like that easily and, here's the best bit , there's endless hot water, scented soaps, shampoos, all free in little baskets, so you don't have to go out an buy anything."

"How do I ..?" Yoshi's voice trailed off. John had clearly anticipated her hesitancy and continued explaining reassuringly.

"Well, two of my engineers jumped back to 1994 and started laying out civilian caches. You know : clothing, credit cards, bank accounts, IDs . There's a cache about six hundred metres from this hotel and five hundred from the Shuttle point. "

"What are you saying John? I thought I was going back with a unit to retrieve Rain."

"Yoshi , I'm saying you need a break. You haven't had a break since 1999, have you?"

Yoshi scowled : "I didn't like holidays. I like work." She replied bluntly.

"OK, let's approach this the other way, I'm sending you , ordering you, and Tracker, just the two of you, back to 1999, to pick up Rain. You get seven days . You spend five re acclamatising , one picking up Rain, briefly say "hi" to Cameron for me, and come back on the shuttle rebound. Simple, how difficult can it be?

"You want just me and Tracker me to go back to 1999 ?"

"Yes." nodded john waiting for the bulb to light up. She was so like Cameron ,you had to be patient with her, yet she knew far more than her expression ever gave away. It occurred to him he might even be being hustled here slightly. Cameron had this way of making you feel like everything was his idea, and with her it was a very long game.

" Why just the two of us?"

" Because I don't want four man T8 unit clomping around and breaking the place up, simple straight dive-in , small splash ,minor ripples . Deep Time smooths the distortions out , goes where it will, and readjusts ."

Yoshi seemed to be weighing it up. She didn't look totally convinced. "Dial1 . Ask for reception." She mused " I stay in hotel with a ecologically damaging sized bath. You can fit two people into it." She frowned again .

"It's only for seven days Yoshi, John prompted " You've got a sentient T8, Tracker, with you , no one's going to be unkind to you or try to harm you. The last two days you'll have two Terminators with you . Just think: Rain's going to be so relieved to see you .

Jon shut his eyes for a second and turned his head to one side exhaling a deep breath.

" Yoshi, I give you my word-I'll personally look after all the kids myself whilst you are away. I guess I can stay awake seven nights. "

" Now what can possibly go wrong?" John added with ,what she read to be ,a forced smile. Yoshi. I've ready briefed Tracker, and ," John tried not to pause he sensed given the opportunity she might try a different tactic to argue against the plan " given the urgency of this situation you're both leaving in, , he glanced at his watch , eighteen minutes."

* * *

A bright sphere of blue light the size of a pool ball appeared in between the towering walls of of crushed cars in the back of Sacramento Auto's And Salvage yard. It hovered a metre off the ground and then expanded rapidly, its sides vaporising a perfect circle into the cubed ranks of crushed metal . Its expansion created a plume of white hot molten steel that rose to scatter like pellets of burning rain across the yard.

Captain Yoshiko Yamanto had screwed her eyelids so tightly together it felt as if they were fused permanently shut She'd had no sense whatsoever of moving or falling through time . It all had been colour and light. The peak of the jump had been so bright , a firework finale of yellow flashes had exploded deep into roots of her optic nerves. Worse of all Yoshi knew she was pinned down by immense weight . It was the same sensation as being half awake and yet still paralysed inside a dream you are trying to wake from.

Yoshi prised open one eyelid , then the other and squinted out. Lit by the last white light, earthing itself out, two inches from her face a pair of blue eyes , a forehead and the bridge of nose. That's when realised she was naked , and she was pinned under the body of a Triple- Eight ,who, having regained consciousness was pushing himself up from her. She felt her skin lightly peeling from his when they separated . Free of his weight Yoshi gasped in huge lungfuls of air, and, starting with her hands, she began to try to work some movement back into her limbs.

She forced herself to sit up, when she did she coughed and looked around. Yoshi could hear the traffic from the freeway and the lights of commercial aircraft shimmered overhead.

Tracker was already on his feet and scanning the area. He turned immediately back to her he bent down and held out his hand. As she stood her legs wobbled and she leant against him , pressing against his naked body for support. He wrapped a protective arm around her back and pulled her in closer. She could hear the simulation of his heart beating, felt the rise and fall his muscular chest. Yoshi glanced up at his face . He was looking at the stars . The stars, overhead were as she remembered them.

"You ready ?"he asked.

Yoshi nodded and in one movement he lifted her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing at all and with concentration of a fire walker picked out the safest route across the smouldering rim of the hemisphere burnt into the tarmac. He headed straight for the roller shutter at the back of the garage. Still holding he with one arm he lowered to her feet.  
He reached over the top of the shutter and felt around for the key. This was most unanticipated. There was no key.

Tracker knelt and with his free arm he snapped the padlock and pushed the shutter up and over. Tracker half carried walked Yoshi inside. Then in one, ceiling to floor movement he shut the metal roller down behind them.

Tracker left Yoshi standing, supporting herself against a wooden table in complete darkness. . A pair of red eyes scanned her from head to toe, rendering her exact features. She couldn't hear Tracker moving around the changing area, only the creak of old lockers being opened and the swish of clothes being pulled off the hangers. This wasn't what they had agreed with The General. Where were the piles of clothing, the suitcases?

When Tracker returned he placed a towel on the the table lifted Yoshi on it. He managed to find checked shirt , a T shirt pair of jeans. She let him dress her. It felt as if she were child being helped by a parent and she was surprised how quickly and accurately he slipped her new clothing onto her body. To finish he wrapped a belt around her waist , and pulled it tight enough to hold the trousers up . "

"Sorry they were the nearest fit." Tracker spoke quietly as he was rolling up the bottom of her jeans so they didn't drag on the floor . Then he began fitting a pair of old training shoes, that were about three sizes too big , but they would do for now. By 1999 standards the clothes were actually in need of washing , but ( setting Century conditions aside), by future standards, they were relatively clean.

"Thanks" she whispered when he'd finished tying her laces . "Thank you ."

"That's Ok. " A pair of red eyes flashed in front her chest waist his hand briefly touched her knee.

Yoshi sat on the table stretching her arms and legs. She heard him getting dressed himself,and felt movements of air around her , he was only inches from away pulling on a shirt

"We've nearly got a matching set." Tracker announced, your shirt is red check, mine's blue. There was significantly less oil on yours."

"Aww I so wanted the blue one ." Yoshi whispered in mock protest." What else you found?"

"There's seventeen dollars and thirty five cents . One can of Orangeade inside sell by date , and this." Yoshi felt a heavy leather bike jacket being place over her shoulders .

"Anything else?" Yoshi inquired.

"The set of keys inside the jacket pocket."

She heard them jingle as he tossed them l in the air and snapped his fingers close to catch them. " The bike's propped against the wall by the shutter.

"No car, no I'D's no cards no cash. What's going on here Tracker? I though this was a cache-RV."

"I'm not sure yet" came the calm voice out of the complete darkness. Tracker had been bent down to pull open the shutter and wheel the Harley out onto the tarmac. When he got it outside he stood up on the foot pegs and exploded into life barking thunder echoing off the walls at the back of the parking lot. This was clearly an emergency vehicle, the set of keys in the left hand pocket of the jacket, a full tank of fuel. He signalled Yoshi to come over , She closed the shutter to the ground and climbed onto the pillion seat . Then they were away and she was being driven out into downtown Sacramento traffic with infinite care and precision.

* * *

Tracker pulled into the nearest filling station, they dismounted and he put the bike on its stand.

"Wait here" Yoshi noted tracker was going into a particular strategy-mode. This worried her slightly. She did her best to avoid eye contact with a group of males who pulled into  
the station in a dented black Ford Mondeo. She didn't have to worry ,Tracker emerged and nearly ran across the distance between them. He almost ignored her, got back on the bike and started it up. He helped her get back on. She wrapped her arm around his waist.

"What is it?"

"It's nothing too serious." He replied. "The cache RV hasn't been set up yet because we are seventy two hours early. That's all ."

Suddenly Yoshi's vision of a hotel room, food on demand, and endless hot water, and the almost possible fantasy John had fed her of a twin bath with the sentient being she loved, faded. She was back on a Pre-JD planet with six billion, irrational, mostly incomprehensible, violent , war-inclined , bizarrely prejudiced, Normals ! She was going to have to attempt to lie, play silly mind/social status games all over again . Life had been so much easier and clear cut after the missiles fell. She loved being on Base surrounded by her human and Metal friends, and "her" kids. She hated this place, 1999.

This was going to be harder than doing three days in Century, at least she could read Metal , but she couldn't read irrational Skin . She grabbed hold of Tracker's abdominal muscles through his shirt and dug her tightly curled fingers into his six-pack . He took his hand off the grip for a second and reassuringly stroked her arm through the leather jacket.

This certainly "hadn't been in the brochure."


End file.
